the crisp
the cool
the snap
the surge
that first bite of bone cold
our host
still warmed enough by our local neighborhood sun.
a signal
a chase
a race of leaves to the mother’s floor.
a rattle
a spin
leaves tumble the street end on end in the wind
sounds to ear mimic rain but are dry rouse rustle
a carpet
a mat
a former umbrella.
that feel
that snap
undeniable –
the crisp.
under the harvest moon
upon my common harbor
for I embark unto that vessel of sleep
the voyage to the portal of dawn
for I awake unaware of the miles spent
that certainly lay behind me now
onward to a new world on the morn
with time, a hunt, in the yarn
let the first light confirm again
the miracle of first breathes and tell
the joy of open eyes
the sound of life
of my beating heart
like the ever waves
the sounds of life awake
from roots to ruins
from roofs to moons
dead rocks orbiting
hollow worlds – hollow moons
locked in solitary confinement
celestial infinite loops
along the morning commute, I usually see them lined up by the dozens, in their usual spot, erm… row, actually, on a line that crosses above a particular side road I use to get to the ole turnpike, but this morning, they were on a lawn feasting, a bit early for thanksgiving I thought, apparently someone laid out some feed and the pigeons were doing what any upstanding pigeon citizen would be doing with such a bountiful opportunity, then there is me, in all my armor complexity, wrapped neatly in this breathing metal skinned beast, a cocoon of technology separating me at almost every instance from simplicity, I wondered, wandered, for a moment… -to be a pigeon, the pure simplicity of the thing, just being, unaware of things that do not matter, like who won the bachelor, I wonder if pigeon’s have real house wives? I suppose not, no town names, street names, house numbers, interstate monikers, none of it, all falls away, would I be happy this way, a mental exercise with no destination as I surely can not make that determination reality, but I can dream, or retrograde I think, how would I begin? strip? strip down from this onion, mantle to core? or more, start from the ground up, scratch, I’m not sure, but I must admit, I felt a moment of calm contemplating the whole scenario as it whizzed through my mind like a bullet train, the simplicity is alluring, but how much do I really know, maybe I should park, stick my beak on the ground and give it a go, I might find there are more complexities to this quick puddle toe, nothing is ever as it seems on first glance, but I do wonder sometimes and try to mold some of that into my own experience, essence, being or what have you, for I did have that moment, nature punting a lesson in my direction, sometimes you just need to stop and listen.
in the company
of shame and regret
so I thee dwell
knowingly
the inescapable past
that sin
always there
bled in with pen
the clearest of bookmarks doth mark
a clarion chapter
the scarlet L
forever after
my story told
so far
and I can not begin again.
for a ledger has no mercy
especially – once written.
let this be a cautionary tale, since I get company vehicles I received satellite radio with each new one, I was out on the road more often in the past so I signed up for XM service fulltime on my dime, however, in these pandemic daze… or days, I am not nearly out on the road so much (plus I have tons of stuff to listen to on my USB drive anywho), I got a new car (and my ex-car was passed to a new tech) so I figured I would just let my XM subscription run out by itself and not even worry about it (giving the new guy free radio for a bit), easy peasy, right? nah… not so much… I get this screaming yellow letter that my account is past due and they will continue to charge me (the credit card on file is expired), so I figure I could cancel this online… right? nope… back to screaming yellow letter, the phone number in big print should work…nope… well then, at the very very very bottom, and in ant size oompa loompa font print there is a completely different phone number for cancel requests, Stall Tactic #1 (here on out known as “ST#”), so I call the (small) number, I have to verify my entire DNA genome, twice, (I mean just an account number is not sufficient in this day and age? please…), that would be ST#2 for those keeping score @ home, call center connects, I have to verify all my info, again, twice (seriously, ST#3), guess what? their computer system is having ‘trouble’ (ST#4+), I get put on hold a few times for this, semi-robotic-non-sincere apologies are not exactly soothing my soul, not to mention that the words “I want to cancel” do not seem to penetrate into the lobe of the phone conductor, so after this myriad of delays (15 minutes in now) the clerk informs me I need to ‘take care of my balance’ for the amount my radio was being ‘used’ past the expiration date, $24.14… OK, no big deal, I’m ready to deal, seems simple? nope… I am informed that I need to pay a total of $241.64 to bring my account current (that is the yearly rate), what? but then I would be issued a credit … wait for it… “if I want to cancel”… (insert hair pulling here), so almost 30 min in @ this point and I have to pay ahead to go ahead and cancel my account, maddening, I protest, a couple more times put on hold (ST#5), finally the clerk reads me some legal mumbo jumbo and is going to take my $24.14 to bring my account current, whew, near done? right… ? nah… so I give her my credit card number, twice (of course), put on hold… she comes back, ‘I’m sorry that card is declined’ (ST#6+), this is a brandy new card, I have near perfect credit, and there is not even a balance on it… so, we go through the card number again, twice (as if you had to ask?), put on hold… and low and behold, viola! my card works, how magical… she says ‘OK, your account is current after the $241.64 charge’, what?!? now I think I understand that astronaut who put on diapers and drove across the country… so I again, reiterated irately that I wanted to “cannnnncelllll theeeeee aaaaaahhhcountttttt”, (cruising past the 40 minute mark now), ‘I understand but before I can transfer you to that department -were you able to have everything you needed done on our call today?-‘ (phone drop sound, on my end) “No, of course not, how can you even ask that question?!” ‘ok, sir, sorry for the inconvenience, please hold’… (ST#, ahh… who’s counting), another person picks up, I think you can guess what happens here, I have to give them my information… from scratch… again… I was pretty much at my end here so… the conversation went south (I am omitting a bunch of ‘put on holds’ for the sake of my sanity)…
“I want to cancel my service”
‘do you no longer have the 2017 Hyundai?’
“No, it was crashed and took both my legs with it”
(and without a hitch…)
‘so will you be getting a new vehicle?’
“No, my wheel chair does not have a radio”
‘well, I was looking through your account and it seems we can offer you 41% off for the year, that would be a credit of $120 off what you have already paid for the year’
“NO… I WANT TO CANCEL MY ACCOUNT”
(nearly an hour in… last nerve twitched and frazzled, but I did not use obscenities’.. I was close though… so damn close…)
and finally… finally… I get a confirmation of the cancellation… now I know what it feels like to run a marathon and break through that little tape thing @ the end and collapse in a joyous puddle of my own fluids… ok, maybe that’s a touch gross… but I digress…
I don’t support boycotts and the like… but companies should be called out for garbage like this…
simple haiku form
the original twitter
without the bull#hash
notes.. just something whimsical that danced into my mind this afternoon, could have been bustelo-induced… you never know with that stuff…
wildflowers stand in the rain
colors are striking
autumn, before leaves are none
notes: alternate haiku form here… came to me driving around today, yes, there are literal wildflower fields on the sides of the highways here these days (see : this), I saw a patch, and these words popped into my head as is (a splash of color on a dreary wind driven rain day), I have often just wanted to pull over, pull a selfie diving into such fields… but they never come out as you think they should, the hills are not alive with the sound of music, just people laughing at my epic fails falling into such scenery… so maybe I revealed too much…
what a strange turn of events this vacation has been, I come here to escape the masses and now they are here en masse, at least compared to this time of year most years, so where can I escape to? the only refuge left, as the bars and restaurants rev up, as the cars line up, the beach becomes a haven, most folks I suppose look for the sun and sand, I am more for the sound of the shore, the hotel pool bar is in full swing as I walk by, some country song is blaring, I couldn’t tell you which one, not my scene, I get to the boards that lead off to the beach, take off my shoes where the boards disappear into the dunes, no need to get them full of sand, the sand is cold, expected, I walk away from the direction of the town, as the sounds fade into the forward sound of the ocean crashing, I find the line just beyond where civilization has no longer hold on the audio, the beach is still lit from backdrop behind me, but here I am, just deep enough on the beach to blank out the world, only a matter of feet, but that is all that matters, I here some voices here and there in the dark, but no one approaches, or if they do they are mere shadows, what I mistake for a person turns out to be the warning sign for the jetty, all the artificial light behind me, all the smiles, the laughs, the music, all the normal draw, but here I am more enamored with the stars, and even the stardust in between, there seems to be motion, for surely there is, but the earth is also moving, spinning, so which of these is? both I suppose, but only my perception sitting here on the cold sand, I bury my bare feet in, I feel like I am evaporating into the sky, actually perceiving the world draining me into that expanse, something I have felt before, like those first nights of cold as you watch your breath take form, except this is like smoke, mist or steam, streaming off of my soul, but no panic, only calm, to become part of the cosmos, the possibilities, for as ancient as the ocean is, there is only so much to this marble, as amazing as she is, I wish to travel to the stars, in whatever form, past this limited life, there must be more, or I hope there is more, the answers, or even uncontemplated questions out there, up there, I feel the pull…
running my hands through the sand, reminds me of sandcastles, how we would build them on the water’s edge, always thinking we could out smart or out maneuver the ocean, never thinking for a minute we would lose, youthful optimism (some may say naivete, I say no), maybe that is just who I am, or always was, even now, that I know the inevitabilities, I still fight for the sandcastles, dredge trenches to oppose the incoming tide, for what else is there?
the beach looks lunar at night, frozen footprints from those who have been, the same stars, no sounds from animals, the birds have gone to sleep, craters and valleys all around, the same color, the same bland color all around, the only savior, here at least, the sound, the constant purr of the evening ocean sliding beneath the dunes, the tune that surely is the oldest known, to all land.
there are different memories of mine of the jersey shore, the real one, not what you saw on TV, wildwood crest when I was a child (boardwalk with rides and games) and then later on Cape May, I never recoiled, as early as I can recall, at the raw seafood bar (specifically talking about The Lobster House), it took me a while to get used to oysters however, but clams? I suppose we were meant to be, I suppose texturally they are similar to oysters but not for me, I like the chewability of them, yes, I like to chew them, big ole cherrystones on the half shell raw, I notice many people kind of slurp them down quickly, only getting a bit of the ocean flavor doused in cocktail sauce, kind of powering through them like shots of liquor, I want more than that flash, I want to know where they are from to savor the flavor, for a moment more at least, this particular raw bar, was my first, and to which all others have always been compared, maybe the location has something to do with it, my home state, the vacation memories with my folks and now my own-some, all these years, the same, you order them up, they schuck them up, nothing fancy, a big plate of ice, a wedge of lemon, a container of cocktail sauce, no crackers (sorry Maryland), a dollar store child’s size plastic fork, and that all adds up to perfection, with social distancing in order, I had to take my order down the dock, literally the raw bar’s backdrop is the dock where the commercial fishing boats come in to deliver their catch, you sit in their shadows and can almost listen to their histories creaking in the hulls, certainly smell the fresh ocean and a bit of oil, seating is equally simple, tables made out of those rope storage spools painted over too many times to count, surrounded by the ubiquitous plastic white chairs, even in covid times there is comfort there in this setting, while not bustling it was busier than I might have thought, the every other minute decades old sounding announcement system bleating out about orders ready at the takeout window, “ticket 1916, ticket 1916, ready @ the takeout window”, but I concentrate on my plate, a glistening fresh 2 dozen, I could eat 100, or more, probably, I try to remind myself to slow down, take a sip of amstel in-between, but damn they are so good, all those memories triggered in a bite flood my entirety, the burst of sea water, a tinge of cocktail sauce, the meaty texture of the clam bellies, everything I remember, surely would be a disappointment if it were not, but my entire life, this one spot, nothing seems to change even in a pandemic year, and in a way, it calms my soul, letting me know everything will be just fine, at least for now, with a simple plate of clams, well, now… they are … gone.
(side note “the raw bar” would make a great strip club name, just saying)
Shades of My Garden 