as once the sphinx asleep in the sands so clear now upon excavation my mind wanders a, lone, last, resident, heart incoherent, time travel to a place, a palace of emptiness a tomb, once resplendent in the adornments of love a blooming garden in the sun, long gone – dilapidated ruins, strewn columns, passing uncaring tourist feet wanton blind, I travel the path, to the lost oasis, armed, with no reason a fool’s journey of temporary reprieve or warm habit had but old empty hands itch for anything to grasp and so this goes my fantasy, once reality, my past a proud worn marker once, leans down broken, half buried in dirt once mud, discarded, on a side road forgotten by some haunted by others tethered by one
notes… Of course I am fascinated by the pyramids and such… the sphinx was buried until pretty recently, so imagine the sphinx sleeping for a time, where the meaning maybe was forgotten, but have I made a monument in my mind? to my love… yes, maybe, and then the years pass and you forget, for a time, but then maybe revisit that monument, that love, buried a bit, worn, but never gone, that is what I was feeling here, and the gist of the thrust of the poem… as usual it came up upon me and just wrote, the first few lines just popped into my head.
blogging is a strange and wondrous thing, I like to sit back and reassess things from time to time, try and look through another looking glass as best I can guess, examine what my motivations are, the paths, the pushers, the markers, the maps, the blind stumbling into something in the night, in those corners I do see a pair of eyes, not red glowing ones like you might expect in some horror movie, more like intensely Mona Lisa eyes following my route, knowing it before I chart the very lines, as if steering me somehow and soaking in the satisfaction of pulling puppet strings, always there, staring intently with mal-intent, or maybe not, just being what nature made this creature to be, a role fulfilled, a perfect part in a Shakespearean play, who am I to judge, this has been around far longer than me anyway, the eyes you say? that spy? that sneak thief of the night? fear. Sometimes just a hint, ‘should I post this?’, ‘what will people think?’, ‘will anyone care at all about this?’ and the usual litany, I have to say most off these wash on by me down river, not that I am impervious to such doubt darts, but I didn’t start my blog for such things as clout or monetization (if you do, that’s fine, to each his own, no worries there), perhaps more of what bothers me at times is when I pour myself into something or feel that ultra bright hot inspiration strike, the feeling is so unique, a fire inside that gears the factory into the production of your creation, exhilaration, and then expectation that the rest of the world will see this brilliant shiny thing you just made, and it is met with virtual silence, or a comment generator looking to sell you viagra (I’m good for now, thanks), I am always amazed at what does catch fire as opposed to what I think should, I think about the prospect of re-posting some of my faves but never do, that was ‘that’ time I always tell myself, other people re-post sometimes like it is a new post, I can always tell as I have a near photographic memory when it comes to things I have read, but as always everyone is not me, hard to step into those other shoes unless you do the exercise to excise yourself from the time sometimes, and even then you are always a little biased toward yourself, I mean, how could you not be, we’re not robots as of yet. I think the one ghost of any real substance hanging in the back-end of my closet would be a drought, the sudden realization I had nothing to write about, it seems absurd when I look at the sheer volume of my work, but those times when the words seem out of reach, hanging off a ledge by just my fingertips, the thoughts creep in like a cold wind under a usually stout door, and go right for my feet, sending that chill right up my prime meridian like an instant freezing spell, the doubt turns on itself, like sharks in a frenzy, muddling up the water, with blood and bits, a slaughter, a tornado does never seem to end when you are in the middle of one, but you must learn to let things settle, one breath at a time, time always moves on, just let the dust settle, things will become clear, but always those eyes, that fear, never truly retreats, you just have to accept the beast as part of your tapestry.
(irony: I wrote three other pieces when I wrote this and some I posted before this… I should learn to turn my internal thermostat better)
notes… hey, sometimes I have to flash my metal street cred (and decades of knowledge in the realm), the original fear factory album was insane killer but this remix EP was fierce, a great mix of metal and techno, and rhys (front line assembly) is just an unrecognized genius who never got his due like Trent Rez (NIN) has… my opinion, and heck, this is my blog so my opinion rules here…
she is the calm in at once the womb of death herself
how many times a stone washed before the surface is no longer itself but round
notes… I am not going to over analyze this one to death, I am playing with a few ideas here, and of course, I would be remiss if I did not say thanks for the looks, likes, hot chile recipes and such… we are all stuck on this globe right now together for some reason, when someone figures it out, text me, will ya?
(that thing I do) …and the strange summer continues, the singular perfume of coppertone replaced with the stark drying reality of hand sanitizer, as of late the humidity and heat bear more of a resemblance to late summer, and these hazy hot days have strung together like an oppressive archipelago stretched across an ocean ring of fire’s back, all in the cast net of my immediate sight and sense seem worn down, the world knows that only needed effort be spent, anything above that red line will be savaged drowned in sweat and drained out with haste, like a sudden plug at the bottom of a lake pulled, like in a bathtub, downward down, spirals and gone, to the last drop, even sound can not bear the weight, there are a few, creatures here and there, wise asses, singing from within shadows fronting proud, but no brazen chasing from branch to branch, no courting, romance or anything other than rest and wait, the first ambassadors of summer, the fireflies have come, admire and rejoice in their strange shows, there is no Broadway you know, I wonder what I would do if I could flash a bio-luminescent part of my body, I would hope to have control when off it went, even the pages of my journal are moist after a few minutes out this evening, paper sweat, unfortunately this does not make my words more salient or have more depth, I wish I could hear the purrs of the clouds, for surely they are doing so, sun on their backs, casually rolling through the darkening azure path, rubbing the corners of their mouths on the horizon bent, nothing on their agenda tonight, except to simply be, stretched out for miles like mountains, motion barely perceptible like dreams sleeping in the deep oceans unseen, I see leaves moving, bobbing side to side, and yet I feel no breeze, just this stifling brick cocoon of moist heat, barely evaporating off me even as an hour or more passes, not so long now I will retire back to my man made shelter, with the control of the weather at my fingertips, and then might straighten right up like a parched flower placed in a vase of purest water, and bloom again – for at least some hours.
ever wonder about the time of your life, I mean, when you happened to be born or not, sure, not much choice involved, I’ll grant you that, but there is always the wonder about living in other times in history future and past, we have approximations or even good (solid) ideas about what that means, at least in theory, in words in books, but not the day to day, moment to moment, breath to breath experience of those actual lives, what we take for granted would be miraculous to those in the past, and conversely those looking back at blogs and us might scoff, ‘written words… on a screen, tell me more grandpa!’, for whatever reason my mind drifted just now, tonight, as I was packing up my car for work tomorrow, I walked outside (as my car is not parked inside silly), the night is quiet, humid, hanging low, kind of ominous and pressing down like extra gravity, the street light, the actual light seems suspended in the air before finally exhausted reaching my eyes, and that leads me to wonder how the streets must have looked in time of just flame lamps, the time before electricity transformed this land (and the irony is not lost on me that I live in Edison, mind you, we have a big light bulb monument just around the bend), so, those flaming lamps, imagine all the time having to deal with fire and fuel instead of outlets, fire seems like such a dangerous thing at times, and is, but during that then it was the daily tool for all things, especially to fight off the night, how much darker things were then, most of us do not live that daily reality, fire is more a cute thing now when it is not a menace burning something down, a fireplace is a nice seasonal convenience my entire life during the winter holidays, or a fire on the beach leaving embers rising into the sky for late night memories and revelry, or out on a mountain trail cooking up breakfast on the peak of one of the Catskills, but just the replacement for a flip of a switch in everyday convenience? of course I could opine all that about ‘simpler times’ and the like, but every technology has it’s own idiosyncrasies in their moment of shine, every society looks back and raises a snobby nose at the more ‘primitive’ times, even if we are surely ever becoming someone else’s primitives by design, back to my musing vision…
the time of gas powered (or kerosene) street lamps, in a way romantic, yes, in my mind I hear the sounds of horse drawn carriages, that perfect rhythm of hoofs up and down wooden wheels turning and churning, I think of moist cobblestone with a night sheen at certain angles, uneven roads that translate even the most comfortable ride into some level of bobble headmotion, we live in a world of static shadows, as our electric street lights are now pinnacles of consistent stability, save for those broken ones or the ones that flicker like twitching fireflies, those old gas lights, dancing flames, shadows twirling with demons, owls asking questions openly, light cast on doubting watching eyes, all things to the imagination, perhaps I am romanticizing, or have seen too many horror movies set at the turn of the previous century, when I think of those old flame lit streets I think of London, and Jack the Ripper, strange how a kid from New Jersey has such a singular view and vision, but it is what I think about in singular fashion, and the night, this night triggered the notion, so I go back inside, to my regular life, to resume all that consumes, so I might retreat back into my own time.
a prayer for her, for let the ground upon which her feet may rest be bound in all the world’s blessing, may light so shine and guide her way forever to seek safe passage until that day when I might be with her once more in passing
notes… and indeed I do miss her, and long for our coming together, if it may ever happen as it once did, I can only imagine….
many years from now, I might imagine sitting on my porch, as an older gentleman, ok, maybe not gentle, but the outside look might call assumptions in the minds of others, younger, an old man, more wrinkles than hair, sitting in a comfortable, not terribly plush, chair, on a summer day, not in the thick of the day, more towards a slow, lazy hazy afternoon, tall glass of lemonade, sweating beads roll down, with a straw poking out – bobbing, an old dog laid out sleeping one eye open by my feet, contemplating life, like a movie review, the good, the bad, the peaks, the valleys, everything in between, the one, or many that got away (and we ain’t talkin’ fish), all the ups and downs survived, at least to get to this point in life, not an accomplishment perhaps, maybe an accident, or just dumb luck, but such is life, this life, and all the show, times like this (I mean the actual present) might seem like a myth, a story told, something someone made up, ‘a country shut down? what?‘, it all seems like a strange dream, the masks, the no masks, the plexi-glass, work from home, no work at all, a mad dash for toilet paper and bottled water, and what most… ? perhaps that might be the question posed.
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I remember 9/11 clearly, I was in Florida then, driving to work when I heard the news, all these years since the one pin that sticks is the phone, the inability to contact anyone, all my family is up here, by up I mean the NY/NJ metro area, and the day was so crazy you didn’t know what was going on, or what was being hit or what could be hit, there was much more than just the towers in the moments of the day, it is easy to look back and focus only on that, but for me, the singular memory, aside from almost feeling like a zombie driver in shock, was the phones, the desperation, the isolation, the lack of information, that was the terror for me, those hours with no contact, no confirmation, no word, no information, knowing I had to know some who were affected directly, but not being able to make the connection, that is my core recollection…
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I remember Sandy, the superstorm, more recent, so the details are quite fresh, the feeling like we dodged a bullet until I heard and saw the transformers popping on the power lines that pass through my neighborhood around 9:30pm, no flooding or damage like that most would associate with, or those that suffered that, just no power, and the next day the temperature dropped off table into the frigid, of all the strange things that went on those weeks the one thing that stands out is the lines, the lines on the parkway for gas, not just cars, miles of cars, people as well with gas cans, lines of people longer than the cars, the constant worry that you might run out of fuel, all the while trying to live life as normal, going to bed early as there was no power, candles, flashlights, and the like are somewhat of a calming influence, no bustle, no TV, no internet, what else is there but sleep and rest at the end of the day, but the lines, always that is what I first remember, waking daily at 3am to drive over to the Hess by the Outer Bridge that would get a delivery nightly, and being thankful to be able to get gas, at all, even waiting hours, then crawl back into bed to get to work by 8:30am and start the whole cycle again, until it is routine… so maybe many years from now, and this is subject to change, my change, the world changes, you never know, well, you do, change is a guaranty, that much is certain, with the question posed, ‘so what about the pandemic of 2020?’ I’ll probably make some lame crack about hindsight referencing the year, so clever, and obvious, but then, on reflection, maybe without hesitation, something on my daily commute that has always been a clarion, not the obvious, masks and distance and all that, my answer might be on track… “the empty train station”
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and with that, the whole of my experience might come back, I live within ear shot of one NJ’s largest train stations, not that that in itself is some amazing fact, but you get used to things, you wear them for awhile and expect them to maintain the same comfort time and again, because… well, there are no surprises, there is consistency, and that frames complacency and assurance, routine, a signal that I am but a couple of turns from home, passing Metropark, seeing the masses unpack from the tubes, shuffle across the road with the awkward flashing pedestrian light installment, passing all the passengers on that road with no sidewalk, I imagine their jobs in NYC, because, where else would they be commuting to honestly, the cars that come to meet them, causing their own little traffic jams turning a little section of cross streets into grand central, but not lately, and maybe I have come to expect this these days, the trains still come, like clockwork they have not missed a beat, I don’t know the schedule but mine intersects the same, nightly, pretty much the same, but these days, empty trains, not a one, not a two, no stragglers, no strangers, no passengers, no… anyone, just empty trains as if this major hub was now a ghost town, and I suppose it was… (and so with that, I might sip some lemonade on these aged broken lips)
to death, so thee I wed the inevitable my betrothed
notes: haiku feel, at least that was my feel on it, one of those that ‘wrote itself’ as I say, well, because it did, the universe was in charge, I was just driving to work this morning, contemplating another useless day earning a buck so I could fund better ones, listening to some tunes, but since traffic has been light(er) I can not jot down my thoughts, so I kept reciting this like a mantra until I got to the office and could write this down, so maybe it resonates more with me, if so, that’s cool, but I leave it up to you…
those trinkets that cause an instant memory jog or jump, instant time travel backwards to a specific happenstance or thought, these, are triggers. here we are in the throes of summer, no, no, that doesn’t sound right, the grip of summer, no, neither, that isn’t quite it, does not convey the feel at all, “here we are traversing the winding path through the baking jungle of summer” (OK, I can live with that one). summer rain. a trigger, in a couple of ways, let me explain if you will lend me your time. the first- driving, driving home on the parkway, windows down (which in itself is part of the freedom of summer anyway), the pavement has been beaten flat with bombardment, rays of sunshine flagellating on the surface for all the day, the visual aspect of heat belly dances along the surface in the distance distorting the air itself, all the while this solar energy is soaking into the black sponge supporting all means of traffic, and then the break, a dark grey breach rolls in, like an instant the rain is unleashed but yet still with the sun not quite out of sight so the light bounces off the rain, showering the earth in a million rainbow shards, the mixture is almost confusing to the mind, rain and sun combined? how can this be, even today my jaded mind is always surprised by this, this I have seen one thousand times at least, then it hits me, this strange smell, intoxicating even if it should not be, there is this strange combination of asphalt, oil, dirt, grime and what not that is released into the atmosphere as the rain quenches audibly the scorched plains before me, almost like a garage but some how, dare I say, refreshing? I know, it may sound strange, but it is the instant trigger of summer road trip, maybe being stuck in a car for hours dulls the senses and this strange invasion of odor somehow seduces reason into being non reason, but that smell, somehow, invigorating, a sunny rain in the summer on a hot road.
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the second– and I will stick with the theme, the little dots begin to overlap on the steps, faster now they overstep the next trying to outdo the first and last, until there is a thunderous downpour top to bottom straight down, the land has been wishing for this all day, green once wilted all around is starting to spring into shape and take a sip, no a gulp, no the rain is running in and out of their mouths of capacity overflow, finding new lakes and pools in the sidewalks bent, rolling in mini flash floods aside the curbs, the house gutters come alive like instant log flumes, there is so much rain in the air it commandeers the air itself, there is a smell to it, a presence of palpable odor, a musty mist of sorts, as if a drop has hit the hot earth and exploded into your direction like an aerosol bomb , over and again, the suspended rain is what fills your mouth and lungs now, you feel the bend and bough of the grass as the bath flashes over and relieves the yolk of the combined heat of the day, you can feel the oppression being washed away, I feel the same, you almost get used to the blanket of humidity, the heavy air on your shoulders, combined with a pharaoh of intense sun, there seems to no reprieve, sweat nearly keeps the beast at bay but in itself provides very little relief, but that rain, a cleansing time, off comes my hat to look skyward and let the drops wash the sweat from my face, is there ever a more clean feeling, than this? all time falls, I feel like a pure radiant soul in a waterfall…
Shades of My Garden 