sometimes one must break a few rules, right? exactly! take, for example, speeding through a yellow light.
oh, sure, you run the risk of having a significantly shortly life taking such risks. but age is just a number. so the saying goes, yes? exercise caution, however, is a saying also, and for good reason, often said.
lounging around up on a lily pad in the middle of an evergreen-enshrouded pond, the sin- ugly son of a frog-kissed dimwit. such a simple prince, Sir Slovenly Spit-Ribbet, or, quite simply, The Toad.
first poem i ever had to memorize? robert, as opposed to jack. or wet and cold as it approaches frozen on, say blades of grass. over- seas journalist of such renown that he was sir david. what’s the most poetic? the ice that grows gorgeously from window corners, or when breath hits pane on frigid mornings.
succulents. what are they? they have leaves that seem unapologetically (too much?) weighted down with water. but then there are cacti. i just looked them up – they’re succulents. either way, i cannot seem to keep one. most do not, at first glance, look like they need much upkeep. but now i keep thinking of those plants that seem just water- laden leaves. i think i’ve kept plants like that for many years. or else i’m imagining the green thumb i supposedly inherited. have i not told you that story? from my great grandmother. she grew a banana plant (with bananas) in arkansas!
so what color would you give sparkle? paint chip poetry gives it a light yellow, and that seems fairly reasonable, but i don’t know, it seems to me that anything gifted with sparkle might loathe (because some inanimate objects loathe, right?) definition by any means. especially color. am i getting too into what a characteristic (or color) might think?
science teacher extraordinaire, was his first name charles, i’m doing a search of my high school yearbook for the year i graduated, only i can’t find anything about him at the moment. there are other things he did besides teach physics, biology, algebra and, in my last year there, advanced algebra and trigonometry, or was it calculus?
but i remember that he was mormon, and was a bus driver every day. he had an unusually large family, lived near my grandma and grandpa cross’s place, but he was the science teacher (with him i had physics, biology, algebra, and I think an advanced pre-calculus)
tempt me with another whirlwind of colour. right now, i could say it’s a necessity come up with an easy, efficient way to create a few poignant lyrics. del is always saying too much. or not enough.
There’s something about the spotlight. I looked in ward and wondered if I was interesting. Why
should anyone know who I am? All the while, I kept formulating a person. It was really me. Then I
wondered harder about why anyone would care. I guess the point is that I did. I wanted to be the
best at something. Some thing that came with a spot light, that came with accolades. I got cocky with musical instruments,
occasional applause and compliments were key. The lights of the football stadium on me. But I knew I’d never be that good. Then I tried pacing
stages, memorizing personae, being those other people. I’d been laughed at for years, but being laughed at on stage. It was heroin. Cigarettes. I
don’t know. But I was not good enough. And it requires a certain predetermined stature, most often. I have written since I was seven years old, maybe before that,
because I loved books, I disappeared into them. At nearly 30, I decided that is what I do. And, yes, I felt this is one thing I can do well. Good enough. It’s by my own
measure, which is all that counts. The spot lights are gone. But I keep having these conversations with books, with inanimate objects. I keep trying to make them laugh.
We’re always told to reach as high as we can, to strive for the tippity top. A life has its ups and downs, we are also told. Chin up, nose to the grindstone, get back on that horse that threw you to the curb. These things, in incarnations, we also often hear. Or I have. We hear about spiraling and we hear about rock bottom as well. But one thing I have heard much less about, at least in any detail, is what falling really feels like, what a rush it is, how dizzying, we lose our composure, but yet there’s the thrills, the excitement, the outright fear. Reaching a peak. Missing a stop at the very top. Falling off the bluff. Oops. That’s no fun. Unless maybe you have a hang glider, or (if it happens to be an extra long fall) a parachute. A minute ago I was reaching for a goal, wishing to reach that peak barely discernible on the horizon. Now I am in freefall with no way to float through it, no parachute to make the landing livable. Hey, all you cheerleaders! What should I do? Is there an upside to freefalling? And what, I ask, if but one more inquiry, was so special about the peak I made it to, the one from which I just now fall?
It was a beautiful day. I was strolling through one of St. Petersburg’s most prominent parks. Yes, it was a tourist
attraction. I was a tourist. On a two-night stop on a Baltic Sea gay cruise, if you can imagine that. I like to
imagine it. Even though I’m pretty sure I was there. I have photos. And the port’s architectural skyline burned
into my brain. So it must be true? Anyway, if it was, as we were strolling through this tourist area in St. Petersburg,
suddenly there was a bit of a louder set of vocal noises coming from the sidewalk that our tour guide had us strolling down,
toward some magnificent desti nation, I’m sure. I turned around to see if I could determine what the hubbub might be and all I
noticed at first was that there was a group of people of various ages and heights, women and men, it seemed, dressed a bit differently
than the rest of us, and they
were hauling ass down the side walk in, around, amongst us naive
foreigners. It all happened quite
fast, the group sped through and were gone. It was only shortly thereafter that there were murmur ings of pickpockets – my gay cruise
tour through the middle of St. Peters burg had been targeted by a professional gang of pickpocketers. The stories of what had been taken started circulating
around – they had done quite a bit of damage to our little group. They got nothing from me, though. I had been, as is my habit, walking with my hands
in my pants pockets with my left hand wrapped around my wallet, which I had for many years been placing in my front pocket, for fear of it being pickpocketed.
I wouldn’t have had that much in it. Much more, I suppose than I’ve carried around in a very long time, I’m sure, but for a foreigner in Russia on a guided tour, not
a lot, relatively speaking, I’m sure. For a long while, back when I had friends, one by one they each began getting mugged in my city, here in San Francisco.
That was a rite of passage I wanted nothing to do with. I’ve no second thoughts about wandering the city, even some of its most traditionally shady areas, in the middle of
the night or very early in the morning before the sun rises. It’s not a city that is up all
night, the kind I thought would have been
inevitably mine, but there is something
calm and comforting to me about walking at night through a quiet, sparse metropolis. But I generally stay on the street when I walk, and move swiftly, always aware of
what’s going on around me. So, I suppose fear has been a huge motivator for me. And
no doubt motivates many of us. Ive yet to be
mugged, thankfully. But in this age of bullying
and fearmongering, dispensed for power and money,
I find myself growing complacent. Perhaps this is a
personal protest to what has changed most signif
icantly, to my eyes, in the world we inhabit. The
pickpocketing gang was more of an amusement to me at the time than anything else. But the pop of a firecracker or the initial rumblings of an earthquake are enough to make me jump
and run around in a frenzy in search of whatever impulse has me think of as safety. Or safer. I don’t want to die a tragic death. This seems a universal enough desire. But I could be headed
there. Sixteen years ago I was on a gay cruise on
the Baltic. I visited Russia. I haven’t been outside of the San Francisco Bay Area but for a 2-week stint
in fifteen years. I know I’d take the onrush of that
gang of thieves over complacency, over another ten years of complacency, or just to have another ten years, just to know, just to force myself back out into a perhaps more dangerous world, just for
a few more international adventures, maybe walk the entire night through the streets of a city that is abuzz at all hours of the day and night. How to build such actions back into the realm of possibility?
That’s the question I’m realizing, with a lot of sadness, that I have at the moment. Forcing a soliloquy on the possibility of a lack of hope beaten by such an outcome is worth a try, I suppose. I hope. Sure, why not?
Happy Pop Dance Music with Big Bouncy Enlivened Beats Is Back Week
You should hear what I’ve just heard. I’m here so you don’t have to, though. Thank me now, because guess what? For a few years now, a little known old-school
saying became all the rage. Yes, I’m talking about Get thee to a nunnery! Now that I’m thinking about it that sounds so right it has to be a misquote. The problem with conver
sations about William S. Burroughs is that they, when occurring somewhere in your vicinity, stop you so hard that you immediately forget every thing your own giddy conversation gang has ever
heralded. Thusly the score for the latest in a rather hot spate of dance parties you’re hosting begins.
