Only those who suffer the most appreciate the bitter truths and consequences of lies

Only those who suffer the most appreciate the bitter truths and consequences of lies, the flavored thoughts of inaction mingling with tear-stained shoulder blades, jacket pocket lint beards waiting to hang up in really red lipstick smears…

Only those who believe we must like one another and can't truly understand our unmistakable differences, the unimaginable of knowing the totality of ruin, these questions that suggest to be free is to let go completely, to make it last a little less is to take the chains off and freefall, almost always destined to disappear, the magic of fear…

The burden of immeasurable pain and lasting beauty; to fall is to see that standing is what it is, neither good or bad but for proximity to sun, warmth on the face, lightness on the soul, words that color our every waking moment in the ether of dreams, the ephemeral joys of personal happiness that can neither be conveyed or felt completely, breathing freely, setting out into the oceans of regret and satisfaction.  What is here and now, in this seconds at a time of all that our life is or ever will be, it is here that we must realize we cannot change the unchangeable but grow, be that person we have always dreamed of being, stronger, wiser, less intent on over stylizing our misery for those that 'get it' have it nearest and those that don't or can't or won't ever understand don't need to anyway.  Because death is coming anyway we have all the power of the universe to face it, no smile at tears to justify hot wind between us, anything but open arms willing and ready and ok with the next great step in this life and the next, even if only in the memories of those we leave behind.

Only those who suffer the most appreciate the bitter truths and consequences of thought and action, to believe is to begin to understand the unimaginable, to question is to let go, a little, of the chains that bind, the burden of immeasurable pain and lasting beauty; to fall is to see that standing is what it is, neither good or bad but for the proximity to the sun, warmth on the face, lightness on the soul, words that color our every waking moment in the ether of dreams, the ephemeral joys of personal happiness that can neither be conveyed or felt completely, breathing freely, setting out into the oceans of regret and satisfaction. 

What is here and now, in this seconds at a time of all that our life is or ever will be, it is here that we must realize we cannot change the unchangeable but grow, be that person we have always dreamed of being, stronger, wiser, less intent on over stylizing our misery for those that 'get it' have it nearest and those that don't or can't or won't ever understand don't need to anyway.  Because death is coming anyway we have all the power of the universe to face it, no smile or tears to justify anything but to open your arms willing and ready and ok with the next great step in this life and the next, even if only in the memories of those we leave behind.

This is for you in your forgettable blue

There just never ever seems like the right time to catch up after you've blown through..

Maybe it's because of all the unsettling and dusty trap doors slamming, me getting back up from flat on my butt, remembering how and why and what, not when so I can pretend, but so I deliver the good news that old friends seem so ready to consume, condemn, confusingly slim...and then I get lost rambling on my way to fumbling for words to say, I mean write, how you feel about my feelinglessness when all I can do is sigh, one, two..

Ever notice how far away dreams feel the morning right after, that their lip-smackin' thrill goes cold, gone in a flash, red skin faded like your last happy pill ated, the soda cracker diet in the quiet, shoosh, it's OK, nobody is waiting for safety tape shaping..it's in and kind of quick, this no man's land fantasy strip..

The spiderweb effects of the dead and dying phone book debts, impossible missions never meant to be a condition of my condition, who needs schooling when living on wind, the happily ever after believing you're right when you're wrong, so wrong..

You can't go on, telling people what you want them to feel or you can and did, hardly a substitute kid, knowing what you paid for and when, prostitutes and old men selling sin, no wind, wares on you their wearing through, two-dollar whiskey breath kisses stuck to the glasses, you hold on and I'll own the cloud, no reason we can't get our every ridiculous wish, unless lost we're back to that, caution tape outlines and chalk white mustaches..your the bruised and butter-rum-glue, gotta go now to believe you'll leave your nightstick know-how..

There just never ever seems like the right time to catch up, still.

reprieve rescinded

I've been here before postponed. reprieve rescinded.

Tried almost anything cause I can't stand a sure thing,
wedding silver circle edges make frayed friendship braces,
five will get you ten remembering
dime store Peechee folders and discount sticker prices
metal spirals bite dawn-colored smiles on bargain hunters knees
rustle-busted pages of my notebook disease.

Tried almost anything cause I can't stand pretending
razor blade lines make my forearm alarms
half-page tries and finger black stains
prick cursive edges to make great letter crashes
this country slide for another cop car chase
poor boy white knuckle opera and ditch bank fights
burning red and blue cop car lights
remembering
I've got time for believing
in the sweet hereafter but not before disaster
grape vine lines and razor blade arms
stippled apple orchards make believe
sending beguiled believers heaved almond breeze
the dead and dying of bottleneck flies
torn on summer morning sunrise.

I know you've been here before, poised and ready
drink in hand and thoughts a-many
around or about the good old days
people forget what made them pray
dreams pushed ahead of other dream plays
sketchy blankets in the backseat chapel
smelling of old Chevy super sport nova.

But I'm forgetting again.
you've only just begun
the descent
positioned bent
family strangers in awkward silences
Nowhere near spoken promises-
Been here before
postponed:
reprieve rescinded.

Almost Always Is Sometimes True

 

I should write on sunset air
instead of grieving India ink tears
half-fingered shapes make nightshade grins
caught on the silver of my razor blade sins.  

They say, the many ways
you can't leave until you go
bruised colored masks don't cover lies indigo
tattered kite tails make paper tigers
worn smooth promises that last forever.

I can't go back is tomorrow's news
certainty won't cast this spell over you
half-hearted promises are sure to die
blue tides sell your sand colored eyes.


Make-believe memories heal today's wounds

Almost always is what's sometimes true

Chevy Nova back seats

made of you.

toasting like we had long lives ahead of us

I remember this one time, it was Friday sliding into night after a week of Mondays, San Joaquin Valley beginnings with the perfect moon light for one those endless teenage weekends. We had gotten into a fight days before, some triviality of brothers 11 months apart, set out in opposite directions so we could let time and distance make wrong right again. I can't picture the driving and walking it, which of us had wheels or worn even shoes, his 67 Pony or my 63 Nova – the burgundy one before I rolled it a bakers dozen – but one of us was there and the other showed up, crazy how we found the same walnut orchard bonfire party a million miles from sobriety. Clean getaway-views in all directions, country-wide night inviting, beers in cans that don’t break or chatter to pieces at hundred mile-an-hour cop car clashes. And there we were, backed into a corner, just him and me, sleeves rolled to elbow throws and these Clovis rodeo boys pushing in after T gave one of their girlfriends what she was looking for. Smiles bent to breaking, fists, busted knuckles and black-eye scarecrow rows in our caterwauling – we road the red and blue lights all the way out of sight, laughing at our pummeled disguises, three-quarters of a case of half-cold beer snatched up for later between us, toasting like we had long lives ahead of us.

Your Personal Lottery

Bad news comes in ways, turning, lightning strikes and after hour showers of your thoughts falling down hard, plenty too, black and blue inside doorway places better left to miles and memories instead of dinner table faces too many, angry hands in the shape of angry men forcing you to believe again in dreaming away your worries when stone cold places made of mud and yarn fashion travel better than you ever could. Destined for crawling, broken toes and death throws with all the things unsaid and undone, this here and now nowhere near down and out - or used to. Here listening, listlessly pretending, stop signs ending in trees bleeding red and blue professionals, cops and robbers confessionals from the back seat betwixt metal and hard plastic, mesh made for protection only it does a better job of hurting, common sense unbecoming promises spent, looking back over years between "I don't know what" and " I'm lucky to have someplace to get caught" any more than "I've been living in the shadows of your personal lottery" and the misery settles in like pebbles and stones, cold, calm, forever. News comes in ways made good and other by the receiver, sometimes by the leaver, in increments of forever, tomorrow always a bite size breath just as good as now because it's twenty four hours away from having to believe in someone pushing you to falling down. Knowing is what tells you that no one is stopping them from sending me off into the never-never land of no return.

Red Bills and Car Registration Blues

Mailbox rattle, metal flip lid crackles the addict who clicks his ears, pricks the drum louder as the fat fingered sad sack makes his way, elbow room doorway courtesy, knee to hip pirouette à la seconde and off, off and away goes the letter carrier government soldier making yesterdays out of circles of today. The addict finds the same pattern to be confusing so he forgets sooner or later, lost in the shuffle of neighborhood clatter beyond the din of his crooked reading glasses. Maybe the sad sack would be happier company but he won't come in because the addict won't ask him, content on musing about the delivery driver of smiles instead so he could steal one to wear for a while, a funny lip shape with a Charlie Chaplan bristle brush mustache disguise, a smile and a long whipper snapper stash, curly edges poking holes in donuts and coffee, a guise to make him company instead of surly, welcome when he brings us sunshine and candy bar colored good times rather than red bills and car registration blues. The addict knows only that it is better to be up, however slight the step than down, mired, sticky tennis shoes and bubblegum semi-circle greetings, humdrum collecting meaning lock-step in day time being, burdened by lowered sensibilities; deadpan, bloodshot and clotted veins fat with lethargy, blame and remorse. It is better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes than convince yourself you’ve got other ways, other kinds of words with which to bloviate, busted lips almost mustering the courage to go on when empty rooms call out your name, same filled with cold, stale air, same alone with a different face. It’s almost not quite ready made smooshed up silly, lacking all possible expressions but one – the slack-jawed, cheery cheeks of rosy contentment that comes on hard, sometimes simplified, the ownership of jacked up, the cracked up in two, three, four - nowhere near ordinary any more. The Adderall baby knows how to breathe amphetamine dreams, dextroamphetamine psycho-social beehive believing in the higher power of altered states, play dates with strangers across the many magnitudes of saviors who’ve been there or worse, never known flat on your face homes, preaching to the choir of crumpled desires where we have all gone off on our own, lost combs and lawnmower moans, people who used to ask but don’t any more, knowing it is better to have remembered the good times instead of replacing them with all this penny arcade daytime soap opera charade.

Old Woman's Legs and Dangerous Grins

Each morning we play tug-o-war, backyard long throws and shorter ones at the Border Collie speedway. She finds her place at my side, at the ready, her big brown eyes locked on mine, the ancient lore of wolf theology, the wild ever present, always leading and trailing edges in flight and landings. She holds on to the worn squirrel toy, bares down with her big incisors, settles her weight in proportion to the force she will need to best me at our everyday ritual. She's gentle and determined like her life depends on winning and I don't let on that I know or let her win too easily, her needing to prove her place in our family as mother center, as the hub from which we all turn on this life's journey. I give her the time to take all my time, to root me there, to fend off Sky who comes and goes on rocket-ship toes, his Border Collie pursuits of circles unending but specific - only the pink one will do, he prepared to run forever plus one more, frothy maul wet in waiting and there we are the three of us lost in the eternity of seconds. She always wins but not right off not letting on that I know she has to win, we need her to win as much as she does, to keep on winning, and eventually on the last tug of the last war, once more and she pulls away the winner, eyes beaming, words praising, "you are strong, you are tippy" I say, soft and resolute. She smiles, gulping crisp morning air, savoring it, our wolf mother center standing tall on old woman's legs with dangerous grins for tomorrow.

Toll Booth Holidays

It’s Christmas time but not Christmas, the Thursday before the Friday when my whole world turns blue, black-bruised, faces cracked through, my eyes lose to swells and skinned knees leave lips busted where sidewalk scuffs show carpet struggles against every excuse to leave and never believe. Ten year old boys know how to lie, smile to make people think they don't cry sometimes, easier gone the other way than said out loud, felled instead, down when you can’t stand walking out one more time. It's no good, the good of temporary salvation when dawn brings the senses back and sobriety makes car keys find locks driving at all hours in the dark of trying...sighing. Roads know that in order to go to and fro you have to know hospital emergency room glows, the taste of jail cell metal bars ringing closed and sneakers sliding across linoleum shiny floors. Lonely knows only that grocery store orange makes shelves all the same color except the stock you already forgot, children during the unbearable reason you're glad you didn't keep yours when you stopped bleeding. Filled to choking, chimney black smoke knowing this way that don't have anything to do with having, normal knowing you don't own nothing, no prepubescent identity crisis when someone don't come around after your adolescence got robed to pay rent so you can watch your nighttime soaps so adults don’t make wallboards crack, leave lasting impressions, body shots and permanent blues that don’t survive no matter how much we block them out inside. It's them lines not the lines connecting times that make kids the kids in other peoples living room pics, kids doing the work of picking up after storms have chased men under the spell of cop-light-red and might not be-blue scattered in wet wood fruit orchards black with rain and misremembering. It's the cord wood in my memory of stacked wood like staircases to the hereafter of family battles taking lives much later, the victims of circumstances in the muddy soon after when talking tries to make the happening black not right another time talking about the same hiding. The more you make it less the harder it is to be Christmas, the less lights make warm rooms inviting and, stuck on remembering the harder it is for take-offs, replaced with crash landings. The less you count the clock the more time there is to move in a little closer, let go a little farther, enjoy five feet and rising, not ten will get you twenty for reminiscing, held up at toll booth holidays that don't make change this time of year.

Some elated..others still worried about the future.

Fortunately you came with the power, red hot heat where I never thought I'd be warm again, words wet-wrinkled forehead colored answers for the Jeopardy of unmanned disasters. I imagine the same people gathered in kind tired kitchens, living room dark hiding carpets but not the smell from leaky toy poodle incontinence; shoulder-bent strangers make lounge hours together where radio dial glow makes hard shadows lighter than thousand pound questions like why don't they make blankets for thin skin shiverers or pretty jackets pull-able over warmer inside kind of durable instead of hugging greasy fat faces and stubby finger places reminding me that moving is sometimes like standing still, sometimes waiting, sometimes ending before the inevitable misrememberin'.. Sitting here in the orange of morning coming, blue-black cold colliding where I was only a little while ago in dreams dreaming I could do anything when I was younger and better at upright, fighting alright, needing to believe I can somehow get back to being just OK no matter how far I've come or gone or hope to belong, it's getting harder at pretending to be living when I've always been so much better a lover seeing, until now, this is all so very much wrong, coming and going in the same lines leading to never being here with the tears - when did I get so good at almost not quite never again? Here in the waning years, October gone, November falling all around, December looms and voices collect on the news, me needing to warm up to wake up to get up so I can claw my way through to the middle of knowing I can do this again tomorrow only better, I can live again instead of all this dead kind of being, long gone from who I used to be when I thought I'd never be, this aging, this bent to breaking, the boy from all those years long gone who used to stand on ditch banks looking far away, lost in alfalfa fields and corn stalk scattered squares for rectangles, setting suns and blossoming orange mornings, I don't know where I've been or how I'm going to get away from knowing this is broken and it has to be different even knowing, deep down in my wounded all, I know what it has to be going on even if not long, now or maybe ever, dreaming and going to be.

...

No other outlet looks like this, no place to lay down, no way to make the air less uncomfortable, sand. In the having of no way of seeing, in the dark like kites and kittens and trees, like stray shards of clarity calling bottles and cans clattering, make-shift containers emptying, you are the lost, erect, the bludgeoned and bruised, the talk out loud noise desperate to be heard instead of knowing the truth: there in tall grass shadows in making believing you could have been catching instead of traffic signal heading for red, green, yellow, red gone instead of dead. Wanting more doesn't make you more than anyone else running to catch up to running but, limbs don't work that way, you can't stay, I've been watching you leave since you got here even when I wanted you to stay. More than you is less than ever having had this escape clause space ship audible buzz, the rumble one more time when it was never all that inescapable, cemetery stones aren't for marking they're for saving, names in stone feel like we have a place to go when no one else will show, hallowed uprights spell nighttime culprits, you stole more than I had to offer, deep down, deeper still where these broken limbs make poor shadows pretending to be porch light, one more like last time, the old man's voice coming to chase you away but I can't even do remembering that right. Not any more. Not here without you. When I want to go back there, gone to the really gone, I turn my dreams off, shut down the quiet that seems so silly, smudges in dark carpet of heel to toe might not show it but always seems to say it, tipping past crumpled beer bottles past potato bag chip might, lost when we're caught up in the illumination, same sort of reasoning, making forever last until there ain't no one left, except, nine months line lights up, what's a bastard anyway you ain't been waiting for, no place to lay down, no way to make the air less in my remembering.

It only hurts until you say goodbye

It only hurts until you say goodbye

That sort of nearby kind of I love you
breathing a little air like daylight or some shit like that.
It feels like forever-dreams you make when you’re twenty
words that don’t add up the way your body changes shape
words that don’t make barter with gravity
with standing, face bright light-like photograph-white
you can’t take back even if you wanted crippled legs
no more standing
no more doing a good job of pretending
wet, the ruinous nature of years
the ones that haven’t sucked you dry.

In the morning, you whisper
in the early unsettling
it only hurts until you say goodbye
or I love you.

long enough

The stuff, it's out there, everywhere you look and smell, the sounds pushing against the windows or rattling beneath the floorboards of the old house. If I stop myself I can almost feel the wind moving through the trees, through the warped and stained slat fence where the neighbor kids have pushed the knot holes through and they're scattered like acorns in my lawn. I hit them from time to time with the lawnmower and they pulverize into dust that reminds me of sawing wood when I was a boy to build barns and sheds on the ranch where I grew up. It was damn hard work then. The kids use kitchen knives and spoons. I hear them like woodpeckers pop-pop-popping.

The stuff, it's out there, the information, the words and ideas. It's out there and I just got to let go of my body long enough to realize it again.

/kəmˈpōZHər/

Rain and wind greet me at the door, catch me off balance, give me pause. I see the yard, it hasn't changed, green and black figs like bloated pygmy heads dangle from stubby limbs, dog shit withers, the sun is no where in sight. I fight the urge to move, it's better that way, a chance to encounter upright, a way to breath again. I could be a thousand miles from here or less, maybe in the desert looking at all the stars, huddle too close to that camp fire that singed my pant bottoms, melted my shoes just a little. There are years between us now. That is where memory goes, behind and inside, elusive, unnecessary, a black and jagged shape dissecting the sky, a handful of stones and sticks, an album no one has seen but me since.

Clearing the clutter I prepare myself with things, with things I dislike mostly, with things that I fear will remain a part of my slow and steady decline, things that dig in, bite, wound, things that no one should have to carry around with them. These load stones are gathered for me, around me, they root me to the ground and threaten to carry me away. I have no way of knowing what is just up ahead but it is there, a specter maybe, a faceless face with slits for eyes and the burden of tomorrow held up to the sky.

I write this down in empty space and leave it like a tiny boat made from sticks and bubble gum wrappers. I leave it go in tall and crimson water, in all this absent place that falls like invisible wings of the dead and dying would refuse one more time to solidify.

It Doesn't Matter -- It Hasn't Mattered in a very long time

You called and left a message on my phone. I knew it was you but I didn't answer. It was ten. I should have been asleep for an hour but then again, I should be a lot of things at that hour that I rarely am. And then I listened to your message.

Who you hate?
In the swamps, trying to make a life...3 bottles of wine. Where are you - I miss you. There is a farm here. A farm and a guest house in Uruguay and I'm finishing this film. It's called In Repose. No hope in California. I don't care if you're disappointed in me.

Don't forget me.

And then the message ended and I've never heard from you since.

something positive

I like to think of things in relationships like the line where earth and sky meet, the place along the shore where wet water meets dry sand and they push against one another to be the strongest to survive. I like to think about positive things but negative things are always nearby; the last five years have proven rocks to be the weight of forever on my shoulders and simple breath-like-smiles the stuff of dreams. But I’m prefacing again, side stepping again, looking for a way to make sense of my everyday dilemmas because no one else can. Maybe in the halving of my life between good and bad I should be better at letting go. Maybe conformity isn’t giving up like others give up to drudgery and lethargy. But for now I write about something positive, here like a school assignment I was never very good at.

When I was in the third grade I remember sitting at the tall table in the kitchen of our ranch house and tracing the shapes of dinosaurs on paper too big for tiny hands. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the blue crayon between my stubby fingers filling an outline of long dead reptiles replicated by my mother’s hand. Mom encouraged me and my brother between puffs on a Raleigh cigarette that scored the room with blue and white tendrils caught by shafts of daylight. I think we had just returned from Florida two weeks prior and were still in the awkward phase of moving back in with my fathers parents; two families in one rundown house. That was thirty three years ago.

none of this would matter ever again

I found the old house
wiped the dreams from my eyes,
tears still, hope tingling because I still couldn’t believe
What I was being told was the immeasurable weight of breath, life.
The trees were wet with morning, the grass
bent over here and there with the impressions of footprints
the footprints of strangers to and from the falling house.
I searched the uniforms for names, searched the faces for someone familiar,
someone who could tell me about the night – but no one came forward,
no one explained to me that this was no temporary visit, they came
for to ask questions and figure out what I already knew to be true – none
of this would matter ever again.

Blog Cabins: Movie Reviews and Commentary Made Fun: Fletch's Film Review: Toy Story 3

Blog Cabins: Movie Reviews and Commentary Made Fun: Fletch's Film Review: Toy Story 3

Found this, again, totally by the randomness of blog-hopping, I think I started at http://detailedcriticisms.blogspot.com/

anyway, great review. don't forget mine at http://rorydean.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/toy-story-3-from-past-to-present/

So I copied your personal essay today

So I copied your personal essay today, had to, needed to make it bigger cause my eyes are blurry from too much sleep or not enough. So I’m looking at the words now, after the fact, font size large, screen size larger, and I’m thinking your first sentence tells it all – being alone and realizing you’re alone are two completely different, but connected things. The baptism of voyage, the rain and all make miles I’m guessing, not knowing if you’re talking about driving from Oakland to Nashville or some other beginning and ending. I like the water metaphor. It rains a lot in my personal stories too only I can’t seem to get the windshield wipers to work right or keep the road in focus. Is that what those white lines are for?

I keep tripping over myself. I check my shoes even though I bought them precisely because they didn’t have laces. I think my uncertainty makes me twice left footed because I don’t know whether to keep on through this inspired ramble-on or just tell you how much I’ve enjoyed reading about your happenings.

So I continue like I didn’t just write that. I tell myself writing is part of breathing and even if this gets lost somewhere between this, what, place, this make-believe place, I don’t think so but I keep going back to it like an Oakland sidewalk I haven’t seen up close before, just passing by to somewhere else. But I read on and write on because right now it’s eleven twenty-two and I can’t get back to the finding the job thing right now.

So I’m following you, alone in a car full of people. I like that thought. I often say it similarly but with different people, in a room not a car, in a situation I know I can walk away from but choose not to until it’s too late and I have to answer to someone, anyone. The idea of being closed in seems right, the kind of place I mean where you meet people, find relationship people, even end up attached people but I think it better to avoid that old cliché because there are some parts of your life where being alone is the best it is ever going to get because you don’t know any more than you hope for.

I haven’t made the effort to know your age but I remember nights like that, Arsenio’s big ass smile, not Oprah though, couldn’t get that, eluded me though I can see where she was then as a direct comment on where she was heading, is. “If I can’t see you, you’ve gone too far,” words to live by for sure no matter what kind of upbringing you have to keep your memories in – like a worn out old box, dog ears, torn and tapped too many times but not enough to keep your things from spilling out.

I cannot go to Carnton, I have no business there and realize in my realizing, I must return with dusty steps to what the Spanish call the “apple orchard” for some kind of some kind, here in California’s Owens Valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas. Manzanar, sixty some odd seventy years ago where ‘we’ put the Japanese, where ‘we’ employed the term ‘forced relocation’ like it didn’t mean what it meant and someone wasn’t going to remember enough about it to write it down for later, for shame.

Damn right words there, “no sense of home, no sense of where I belong.” I find your words again and then let them go. I have to continue this journey you started, this journey you shared and keep on with my own now because I have to share, because twenty-one years is a long time but my ten years seems longer, no Florida relatives here though I spent a handful of years in Belle Glade some decades ago.

Best in your quest just beginning after this one. I’m mid-road and stepping, I’m listening and wondering when the rain is going to leave me the way it left you.

Inspired by http://inkwell-masterpiece.blogspot.com/

There's a lot you don't know about

There are a lot of things we don’t know about each other.


I don’t know what it was like for my great, great paternal grandfather 'Manual' to gather up his two wee-daughters and wife in tow and travel by boat from the Azore Islands to America and stake his claim in the rich, fertile grounds of the central San Joaquin Valley at the turn of the century. I can't know what the crops of those first years must have yielded, though I can imagine poorly as most, before taking hold, before roots find much needed footing and nutrients deep below the surface, wither at the first sign of sun and a moment without water; stalks the size of grass, seeds brittle and infertile. There are no pictures of the feeble canal sending mud choked water into the channels that carried them one by one from one end of the ranch to the other and finally, very near exhaustion, the old man must have fallen right there in the pastry-flour like earth to watch in the fleeting hours of the night at the first signs that something, anything was going to keep them from starving much longer.

I have no pictures of the grand two story home he built with his own hands, with the other laborers putting in twelve hours a day until it were built for a cup of thin soup and crusty bread three times a day for a month and finally, together, they sat around with wine and whiskey and strong drink that first evening after and full of spirit lay down their head on the hardwood floor and called themselves kings of crown and country with songs from the old country long forgotten, songs with worn smooth words to prick the ears of lovers and warm the hearts of children to young yet to know such ways. I have no pictures, only stories told with wet eyes because one evening, short on money and patience, the old man took two pennies instead of fuses and rigged up the electrical fuse box to get the lights back on so his wife could finish the wash and the children could do their arithmetic - only in the early, cold hours after all had hurried off, to school and other places, the house caught to fire because of those pennies and by the time anyone was there to stop the blaze the entire place had gone up, one long plume of smoke and ash and fire, a bonfire piercing the sky over and over again until even the men folk had tears in their eyes and the children shivered and the women hadn't even a blanket to chase away the cold.


And I don’t know the name of the pub my great, great maternal grandfather spent his evenings all those years ago. I don't know if it were a regular place or a makeshift room with a sturdy table and a keg of the finest Irish stout to be had from pillar to post and everyone who was in the know knew about the old place. I can't say if a sign hung from the roof, a tin thing held with wire and rivulets of rusty steel. I don't know if the old man propped himself up on a stool or crate after scratching a living out of the earth from sun up to sun down, whether he preferred stout or lager; though if he were anything like me, or I like him, he fancied himself a lager a time or two for a wee parched throat and to soothe his dry and cracked hands from the unforgiving hardwood of an ax handle or the worn smooth handle of a shovel with a head polished like a mirror from the baked and rocky earth of old Ireland. I'd have no way of seeing him, covered in dust, smelling of lager, bent over and crooning over his youngest, one little man with his papa's eyes and disposition, perched for a kiss with a glint only fathers and sons know about. He'd make a go of finding his bed beside the best woman who would ever have him, the woman with the softest hands he had ever known and who he would spend extra on a bar of the smoothest lotion for her after working all day to clean the house and tend the garden and make the clothing look proper, intermittent seconds to peek from one giant laundry pot full of lye to the soup pot on the stove making tough meat edible and making tap water and spices the best stew for crusty bread you have ever known in all your life.

But I would know about her, what a decade just past, the years like stickers in the soles of my feet, what we called goat-heads or puncture vines; little seedy buggers that like barbs would break off in the soft places of your feet to fester and infect. I don't have to close my eyes to see her, not ever I wager, a picture as easily as a memory, moving, hair golden and soft in the wind, angel hair and will-o-wisp to spare, a photograph every second between open sky and the patchy shadows of Eucalyptus or Dutch Elm trees; she had a way of floating about, devil may care even though I knew better, I knew her smile hid such imperfections as children and their mother's don't speak of. I knew how the dark could fall like bricks in heavy, wet burlap and cover one up, snuff out the breath and the light like night but the sun was still up. I knew how words could wound at the very sound of them and how if you held your ears too long your wrists would go numb and you'd have no recourse for the insults, for the jagged and violent words, for the tattering and the bleeding. I know about those things but I’d surely have no idea about those last days, the final hours when the last days of my mother’s life had been just a decade ago crashing and I have hardly the strength to put these words into proper meaning. I know of the ensuing deaths within a year of all but myself; now a vagabond of sorts and wayward traveler of the mind, frequently lost in self aggrandizing.

How I might marvel at my own obituary-worthy accomplishments as though I could in such circumstances, gather a dozen people with hardly an interest in one another to sit around and sip wine on my occasion, to drink in the heady air of summer fair, perched to combat the feeling of another simple passing, another wayward traveler who will not return from this trip. What might a poorly written clip contains; Here lived a man, born at this time, dead today, not much to speak of really. He was an educated man who traveled a bit and wrote a little more, he made a few works of art such as they were and spread them about in limited circles. He was a giving fellow and a curious chap. He fancied a pint or two and conversations so; he died where others have died before and surely there will be those come hither to meet their maker. He was born, he lived, and he died. And that is that.