January 29, 2012

So When It Happened


And so there were popcorn.

The heavens opened and we heard it -- the sound of water rushing forth, brass, and clocks.

Meanwhile in England, they were choosing to read at Oxford, the do battle at Birmingham, to wallow in Wales.

Who put the hail in this day?

Who put the heather in the picture?

It's late and everyone is sleeping.

Beds. Couches. Glasses on tables and faces.

It will be new.

It will be tears of joy and days of awe.

It will be searching.

It will be hovercars for Christmas.

Seriously, digestion is a real bitch sometimes.

Enough already.

January 27, 2012

Large Motor Skills Involve the Use of Long Limbs


Watch your head.

Break your neck.

Dress up.

Deep sea cove.

The seat of hatred, the county seat, the seaside by the seashore by the seat of your pants.

Drinks with a minister, stories revolving around the trials and tribulations of a crack addicted prostitute (in 2012!), multiple personalities, transubstantiation, more Thomas Aquinas, search, and eventually bad behavior.

Search and bad behavior.

Search and those that love them.

Search and a bag of chips.

Search and its discontents.

Search and ever after.

Search and decant.

Devalue. Devour. Defend. Denote.

The Rivers of North Africa salute you, sir.

The Lakes of the Great North are pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am.


January 23, 2012

The Trial, The Fourth


Night time, right time.

Day time, day time.

I have it, for you.

I have it, I have it.

Stepping backward in the summertime.

Stepping backward carefully with flowers and weeds and garden snakes.

January 22, 2012

My Lord, By and By


How many Sundays do you read about some new something with abstracted and mysterious military influences.

David Bowie, you didn't start this.

Prada, you didn't start this.

Or the physical phenom in high school.

Or the prodigal son.

I'm going to take this coffee and this delicious muffin and go elsewhere.

It's not like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, entirely.

My military influences are neither abstracted nor enigmatic:

South Weymouth Naval Airbase
The other day I was telling someone how you didn't hear / notice the hospital helicopters that constantly flew over our place -- except for the way they momentarily scrambled the TV reception. But then Margaret was, No you can totally hear them. And I was, Oh yeah, I grew up on a Naval Airbase.

Or that I was applying to the Academies -- I'll tell you those stories sometime -- or that I had a ROTC scholarship that I was fortunate enough to turn it down even if things were a little touch-and-go feeling at times. I'm all for ROTC, it just wouldn't have been right for me.

And then there were the Naval Academy guys in the peacoats when a friend's family took me to the Navy Academy's wrestling tournament. I'm pretty sure that'll be in my list of "best gateway drugs" at my life's-end award gala.

I was really into WWII as a kid -- though it never strayed to obsession and I can only share the most useless trivia about that war and the Great War.

Do you know why we call them tanks?

Time travel.
Everything all at once, forever.

Sundays have been so many things.

"Dimanche" really does sound amazing in the string of French days.

Lundi, mardi, mecredi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche.

I can't remember Friday, and I'm sure I can't spell, but it still works -- you can feel it.

I'm feeling better.

Look at this amazing traffic circle.

Take a deep breath and edge your way to the right.

Keep on edging and it's all gonna be ok.

No the "right" part isn't symbolic -- I still believe in taxes.

I'm still an unrepentant pinko.

Did I tell you about that time I peed next to Bobby McNamara? Wicked, huh?

Let's get something done.

January 21, 2012

Explaining Phone Booths to a Nine Year-Old


That is how it was.

Now snow. Now Baltimore. Now early morning.

Now ten fingers. Now coffee. Now laundry heading into the dryer.

It'll be jeans today and boots and a sweatshirt.

I need some new shoes that'll be black and nice and last a long time.

I usually wear my black shoes until they blow out, scramble to make it through the day or the week with superglue, then get another pair.

Over the last 15 years I've accumulated three great pairs of black shoes that just need a little cobbling.

Walk down the "just need a little cobbling" path a little while -- metaphors and trite and whatever.

This is what happens when you have ten fingers again.

My across-the-street neighbor growing up back in Massachusetts. He only had two thumbs -- one on each hand -- no other fingers. I seem to remember that he'd lost them at work, that he was a mechanic of some kind.

Margaret asked how he got by -- financially. Me-at-ten hadn't really thought about that. Me-at-thirty-eight assumed he must get some kind of disability checks and is going to ask my mom.

I remember him working on his car out front.

I remember a little bit about how he'd hold things.

I remember him smoking, but I don't think that's real.

Just everyone smoked back then and t-shirts were tighter and the kinds of haircuts people from military families had or the people that lived near them and cans of Schlitz and cars the way they were and smaller houses and a basketball hoop out front.

Remember the gyms that had rubberized floors? Who thought that was a good idea?

I think my neighbors name was Jim and he never sweated whether Pluto was a planet or not.

Meanwhile my other neighbor, who may have been named Jim, too, seems to have started the astrophysics program at the Air Force Academy.

Quite a neighborhood, huh? Two people named Jim!

(That one's for you Adam.)

We are great great great great apes.
There are many many many many planets.

I'm going to put some laundry in the dryer and figure out what the hell I'm going to really sweat from here.

Total aside and in a totally different reality, I want to paint a picture of an iris and write under it, "This is not a rhizome" -- but I don't know if I should write that in French, instead. I was thinking about this while driving on 95 in the early early morning. I didn't write it down -- so I'm glad I remembered it.

Good luck other-reality-me.

Sweat what you need to.

Fuck a buncha everything else.

January 14, 2012

As an Iron Stomach; As You Were

There is a man

There is a sky

There is packaging

There is daytime

There are cards

There is confusion

There are stairs and

There is a ladder

There is a sky

There is food

There is drink

There is Saturday

There is a cat

There is all livestock
There is all livestock



Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

January 12, 2012

Bulls, bow-cows; the string and the day; ways of eating; utility, aperture, ever after; and you





Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

January 11, 2012

Boots!





Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

January 7, 2012

I Could Use a Stronger Line


A more confidant line

A starter sketch with blue lines

Scratches and one over two

Birds, bushes, tomorrow a day away, parsley

Parsley to cook with and cooks who garnish

Unseasonal weather

Unnatural unions

Artificial flavors

Myriad sweeteners are what they want