his eyes follow her form across the room as she moved my eyes my eyes follow her from from and to my thoughts rampant like wildfire fueled by desire, fantasy the idle mind rages in the cauldron of imagination lurid possibilities drowning in insinuation her curves to meet my hands her mouth to meet my lips the sensation that first kiss obsession fevered bliss
notes… so sometimes you look at someone at distance, wondering, fantasizing, living out all the possibilities in your mind in an instant, watching them stride, you imagine your life together in that moment you create a story, a movie and sensations…
I was driving to the local super market type place, right past the mall, and I will be damned, probably am, that the sucker’s parking lot is full, I don’t understand, to me these are like dinosaur bones propped up in a museum hall to be gawked at, well, apparently I am wrong, Jersey is a bastion of malls, apparently, to me they just remind me of the past, days gone by in another life, sort of the internet before there ever was one, one giant complex you could walk into and find everything you could possibly imagine, clothing, sure, that was always the first corridor and all the gateways, but then the big open space in the middle, shoes, electronics, the music store (remember those?), food, pottery and cookware, and inevitably a thousand more clothing places, pane windows filled with reflections of all the wide eyed consumer faces, spaces laced with escalators, little vendor carts with baubles, custom t shirts or hats, cheap jewelry, mobile massage parlors of sorts with water somehow, sometimes there would be a car on display, yes, very much like the internet, no Ebay, and then of course, the crowning jewel, the creme de la creme for me, the arcade, the shining city in the sky, the arcade, home game systems at the time just could not shine and mesmerize in those days like the live ones, Atari Tank against sit down Afterburner II? not even a contest my friend, the coin etiquette, placing that coin up on the ledge in line, pledging your intent, planting your flag as it were, “I’m next”, this quarter says so, and that was the law of the land, a true sugar rush as quarters or tokens hemorrhaged out of your grasp, Gauntlet? I probably paid off the programmers mortgage… TMNT 4 player, The Simpsons one too, learning all the tricks to trick the change machine, photocopied bills, bills with fishing lines attached, not saying I did those things, I just ‘heard’ about them, ahem, let’s move on… all before the internet, this was the gathering place we had, as strangers, the mall, so distant that all seems ago, I still can’t believe it is here, flanked by chain restaurants like guardhouses, also packed this eve, Olive Garden? with all the amazing or just above average Italian places in every nook and cranny, around every other corner, this is not the Olive Garden state people! I guess never ending pasta bowls are a panacea for ills, or just a place so generic it covers all the wills from the grumpy old to the fidgety new… back to the mall, I thought retail was dead, Jersey didn’t get the memo apparently, I honestly can not remember the last time I stepped into this place… but like many things my experience does not the truth make…
panic is like a little voice standing on the shoulders of worry, shouting, in a tiny voice but in a vast empty room filled with boom and echoes, spreading rumors, and birthing life to innuendos, your rational self whispers rational thoughts in a calming matter, no matter, that other voice shatters even the best firewall, at least in drips and drabs, and sometimes waterfalls, the dyke breaks and floods commence, all the while we hope for the best and know for the best that most of the worst will not commence, but for that certain uncertainty unleashed, growing, multiplying, hard to see or count those masses massing in shadow, panic does not thrive in light, dwelling and swelling in the comforts of night, undermine, underfoot, under your breath the words, take flight, but to where? is there a safe space, somewhere, no, shelter in place, any place, as safe as can be which seems like a threat space now, but how? just days ago things were peach, not a worry in the sky, not a cloud, now this breach, this worry, this agent of chaos raging, throbbing, pulsing beyond control, we will to shut it out but our only option now, wait it out…
so behold, that bright marble, a miracle, just another globe in a pantheon of globes in a universe of spinning discs of light, glass encased perfectly situated ball locked in an invisible dance, trance, with a sun and her children spawn, in the outer regions of one tendril of a galaxy’s arm, all racing along a hidden path with purpose, the macro, from afar, a small blue dot winks on the horizon of the heliosphere, and zoomed in closer reveals, an ant colony scrambling about with seeming importance, unaware of perspective, distances so great that they can not be measured nor traveled yet we bustle about, about this marvel of a marble, and from the down here we look out, with our clever inventions and intentions, our human projections, so slight cast out into that great expanse, the art, the gallery of god, strewn across a canvas so massive we will never see the whole cloth, or even the fabric onto which this vision is projected, the strings, imperceptible stitches, the concepts, all tie time together and flow, we can not be alone, for just the ornaments on this holiday tree alone must have some sliver of this gift, this life, so many forms travel on just this little darling of a marvel, this fascinating rolling marble, suspended by magical natural forces, we take them all for granted as they blanket us in wonder, whether designed or natural happenings, the definitions of impossible are quite shattered by our mere presence, there must be more out there, if even we have not seen all the flavors on our own planet, the depths, the dark, the corners un-found or lost for generations, drowned in magma, locked in miles of ice unseen, how much has been before and how much more to come, we are but a footnote in the grand procession, the thrust, the flow, the river of life as branches, arms, reaching in every direction, even to dead ends and new beginnings, life carves through this valley forever changing the landscape as we ballroom dance swing around mother sun, destructive nuclear fire, that yet brings life and desire, our desire, to thrive, inhabit, love, all on this, the blue, marvel marble, floating endlessly in the sky, in space, a womb of the most precious thing of all, life.
stopping to listen to the birds chatter watching a car drive by wondering how many more times will I hear them when I’m gone to contemplate the patterns of branches and the conversations of leaves to figure only even my own being, so I listen, so I watch
notes: observational poetry, something I do, I pause often now just to look at the trees, or if there is water, water, there is just something about water that draws me, a lake, a pond, the ocean biggest of all, but nature, the core, we are tied in to it all, we all feel it but not always…. in our busy days, with our busy lives filled with things that have no real meaning… I am no different, I am caught in the same revision but it is just that, a distraction from what matters, if anything matters, structures, social structures, determine so many lives but that is the way it was and will ever be, and then all that out beyond ourselves, the sky, beyond, there is so much out there outside our snow globe…
in this house of seven gables my crown I wear three pair one from these windows, these portals there stares the observer, the owner, the visitor contemplating the street the sun, the trees sidewalks buckled under root curbs so artfully formed like molded cliffs assessing the neighbors all locked behind doors dwellers in dwellings seeking more but just that fatal one step one move the other side, of that front door to leave the confines into only what was seen and filtered not heard, tasted or felt from within these membranes these walls that contain, and protect one specific flavor one specific intellect
notes… we are in our own prison, we have freedoms but at some point there is freedom from this form, and none of us know what that will be…
I’d almost forgotten you exist, buried back there, you probably have not seen the sun in a decade, the house is quite empty now, quite quiet indeed, no kids feet running rambling, glasses clanging, wine corks thunking, seltzer gurgling, conversations rising sometimes hanging, sports on the TV, pictures of kinders, munching on crackers and platters and dips, how many years has it been, those family get togethers were so common back then, thinking back they feel like a monthly occurrence even though they certainly were not, and certain things were always there to please the crowd, the cloth napkins, certain dishes and certain glassware laid out, the fold up tables from down stairs set up to accommodate the flood of thirty or so relatives, the extra folding metal chairs, stored in the back of the hall closet, black marker marks on the bottoms as to not be confused with the extras brought in, what a fiasco that would be, to lose a chair to a relative you are most certainly to see again, at least for a few more gatherings in that same year, this all seems so distant now, almost blurry, fuzzy, looking down at you my old friend, a companion, a contemporary, a holdover, a memory trigger, from that time ago, your place of prominence on the table, brimming with fresh made ice from the fridge, gleaming silver tongs just under your lid, like a functional centerpiece you did reign, where did this all go, where did everything go, I guess, we all succumb to age, and change, and the accustomed customs wind up out by the curb for pickup, someday, maybe this day, maybe not, you cleverly survived by hiding in the back recess of a cabinet barely touched or ventured in, but for what? a surprise, or just a ticket to a time gone by, people gone by, time that has moved on beyond usefulness, I think I might put you back, at least for a while, and maybe every now and again, might I seek you out, to trigger fond memories of lives and holidays of a by gone day, when I need a smile, to remember not just youth, to remember everyone at that time, as they were with my eyes as I was… like a child running around in a forest of trees to which one day I would grow up to be…
“why do I seek objectivity from perfect strangers I know nothing of them or their dangers”
notes… why do we seek comfort in the bed of strangers, minds I mean, get your head out of the gutter, ok, blame me on that one, my words lead you on, but we pin the tail on the donkey of expectations all the time, why? we yearn for approval, as do I, just try, try and fail and then try and succeed, just believe in yourself, why ? simple… the universe has selected you, yes you, to be alive right now, and we share this space so I would appreciate some help in the matter, you won the universal lottery, think about it, all of the history of the universe… ALL of it, created you, reading this, if that is not amazing or a miracle, then show me one, OK, outside of pandas, koalas, and platypus… no fair on that count, I concede…
might all my steps, all since I have first roamed this earth, all my footprints, in hind new sight, become like glowing beacons under black-light, neon green pathways of where I have been, to see it all mapped out like that, a cartographer’s delight, a story, lines, paths crossing, intersecting, leading, tracing, back and forthing, the mundane, the unusual, the one timers, the two timers, the everyday worn down trails, what patterns they might reveal, the common or the familiar, pointing to family, friends and perhaps strangers, cousins or a dog park, the beach or just a long walk, meandering, spinning in the rain, peeking around a corner to spot a local deer, or standing quite still as the baby jack rabbit passes slowly, how many miles all these years, and I have never changed the oil, surely I am overdue, but I guess when I am due the engine is over, how many roads have I traveled, how many vistas toward have these feet drawn my form, all these neon zig-zags all over the floor, I wonder if some wonderful pattern might appear, a talisman, a mandala, some secret ancient symbol I have been drawing all these years without knowing, and then I might pull back, and rise up to the sky, looking down and seeing my creation from way up high, and the humbleness that will imply, as I see only over a few states my pattern’s eye, how much larger the world, or just this land is than I, I whisk the globe with my hand spin, seeing witness to all the lands, I have not been, and might never not be, the seas, I imagine walking the equator once round, just for the story, and back down, gently back to my grounded self consciousness, and look around, and up, no trace of me in the sky, one day I think, maybe, one day… I might become a constellation…
notes… one of those things that just came to me, and you don’t believe in inspiration ? you silly thing, what causes it, what moves it, what moves us… strangely, we have no idea, why does art exist ? what is the point? it does not feed babies, it does not raise cattle.. but yet… it persists… and always has, so the canvas, is the universe…
this was inspired here but my experience was this… the rest, well you can fill in for yourself, as I expect you would…
“upon opperman’s pond“ beauty beyond beauty be snow worn on trees witness, jury, frozen pond the slow captured still photo a face of ice milky glass window outlined with banks of snow halted in the cold what now sleeps below forever within this hibernation dirge there remains a joy the indomitable force of life rejoice
Shades of My Garden 