what can we do when
off the glaciers sheer
and dams burst outward
to peasants in valley
so far away from you
hunched over a teak desk
looking tight for the line
of the feeders on bottom
As the Dome burns its effigy
in Democracy’s last waltz

08 Monday Feb 2021
Posted Change, Compassion, Conspiracies, Corruption, Environment, Fear, Human, Memorial, News, Poetry, Politics, Sameness
inwhat can we do when
off the glaciers sheer
and dams burst outward
to peasants in valley
so far away from you
hunched over a teak desk
looking tight for the line
of the feeders on bottom
As the Dome burns its effigy
in Democracy’s last waltz
26 Saturday Dec 2020
Posted Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Migraines, Poetry, Writing
ineach word draws the poison
suffering and anger leach
angst and puffed the same
the way I rid yourself from me
ink lathered in blood on page
tear-soaked paper scraps
shriveled napkins tinged with rye
a collective act to ward off life
13 Sunday Dec 2020
Posted Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Pain, Poetry, Uncategorized
inSkull full of daggers,
shooting ache of burning. And
pain causes migraines —
enemy within
nails and scrape to outside out
blind shot of deaf thought
19 Thursday Nov 2020
Posted Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Cannabis, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Growth, Human, Love, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines, Open mind, Pain, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Writing
inThis used to be a cohesive blog to some extent, until a few years ago. A few years ago I started to get migraines.
Actually, based on what I now know about migraines, I guess I’ve had them for most of my life. So the fact that I say it the way that I do means they got pretty bad. Bad enough to have screwed with every part of my life, in one way or another.
I always loved writing, but as the migraines got worse, the ability to string two thoughts together has gotten more difficult. Add to that the fact that most of it is written on a tiny little phone screen, and I fat-finger things when I trying to ride an epiphany and get the words out as fast as they roll through.
Then there was this thing I learned about that can go with migraines, called aphasia. I can ‘see’ exactly what it is that I want to say, but its word isn’t with it anymore. When I am writing and it happens, I give up. In daily life, I just come out with weird shit, like referring to a cutting board as ‘the under-the-knife block’. I get frustrated because I want the writing to be good. I’m starting to not care about that as much as i used to. Fuck it. If my typos bug you, there plenty of other blogs you can visit.
I’ve written a lot, but I think I deleted even more.
Poetry has helped me though. Because I don’t have to string thoughts. I have to evoke images and feelings, and tie them together in some sort of dance. And so, that’s been the majority of what I’ve been writing.
Many times I have tried to write about what I had been going through, only to delete it the next day when everything seemed to change again. If you know someone suffering migraines, you know what that means.
Much of it is related to chronic pain, and so a great deal of this involves dealing with that, when I wasn’t in migraine. And often with both at the same time. Although migraines tend to take over the show. Back pain is kind of like a guy who follows you everywhere playing a harmonica. He would be obnoxious and drive you crazy, right? But imagine if he were to then follow you into a Lou Reed concert or something. If you were even able to hear him, even then he would at best be mildly irritating. Migraines are like that. They’re so loud, they drown everything else out around them.
And with pain, comes pain management. And with pain management comes medicines. And I am in recovery. And it’s at that point that Pandora’s Box comes apart at the seams, as the scotch tape repairs let go again.
That’s been the juggle lately, anyway. Or at least it’s a good jumping off point for a few things.
11 Wednesday Nov 2020
Posted Brain Droppings, Dandelion Break, Poetry, Uncategorized
inin meditation
i dropped a net on my words
can’t write anymore
30 Friday Oct 2020
Posted Art, Change, Emotional Intelligence, Environment, Fear, Hate, Human, Indivisible, Music, Poetry, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole
inIt seems that I tend to post this once in a while, and there’s usually good reason each time. Aside from the fact that this is one of my all-time favorite poems, for me it also calls up a reality check. I’m not alone in that fact, either. And, I have always loved the version that Joni Mitchell arranged, so today I am posting that with the text of the poem. Read deep.
We humans have enough of a history that shows how clearly we are capable of existential damage to each other, as well as our environment. I don’t believe there is anything particularly prophetic in this poem/song, but there are some huge reminders.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
27 Sunday Sep 2020
sunny saturday stroll boy wanders
behind along he follows them all
far enough for the steps and snippets
close enough to wander me alone
they veer right as life carries on
he goes left onto a thickets of field
lost in a world between his two toes
seeking for clover by candlelight heals
looking up dazed to see the big “huh?”
two decades gone on – a third in the dust
friends have proceeded to go onto their homes
the lone candle carried now a torch of “I must”
the handle is scarred, corroded from whether
covered and scored in thousands of nots
burnt from the years for a lighthouse to keep
magpied with memories, a touchstone it’s fraught
stumbling off from his pedestal down
armed with epiphanies, blind to all else
amazed that a world still turns for those left
as friendships go grey, spring blurs to fall
pickup the pieces, repair what you may
clover-full field now all gone to seed
to continue is life, learning the way
with pain as a crown and love as a creed
24 Friday Jul 2020
Posted Death, Emotional Intelligence, Growth, Human, Love, Memorial, Mental Health, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality, Women
in(for Cathy)
living out of the jewel in your heart
love, your connection to each
a filigreed heart for mother and child
fierce in your fight with unjustness
silhouetted by the hallway’s glow
an Angel Trumpet on the breeze
the gauze of your gown hued deep in joy
barefoot to the earth, a smile to sky
you love like a martyr, taking on pain
those in your grace, you cast a pure light
together we draw, when you become near
each fragment made whole by balm
pictures and paintings on walls
in every place you are missed
I wait again to smell your scent &
a crushing hug to bind my heart
23 Thursday Jul 2020
Posted Buddhism, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Human, Love, Middle Way, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality
ina cosmic pulse goes out from you
like a sunspot on my mind
stirring and interfering with myself
and the ways I live and die
veering down an antique canyon
searching through rubble and pictures
for you, thru you, i come to them
regret rains down like foam
a testament to eternality
and the permanence of love
families go on, friends are gone
when the strings of you unwind
the gordian knot of grief, it shivers
resonates itself through space and time
the 7th dimension of too much hurt
revolves in time with Yamantaka
19 Sunday Jul 2020
Posted Anxiety, Depression, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Love, Meditation, Memorial, Mental Health, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality
inturning and spinning
towards the center and back
esteem hits below the belt
love only takes one more
the inevitability of karmic debt
meets the prayers of the saints
halfway to providence and back
I should have learned it then
the silence I long sought inside
now returned an echo of dense
that old son of a bitch is dead
chattering on from his grave
chance took my chance away
with misery born of longing
solitude’s underbelly exposed
while guilt slow nurtures the hounds