on yr riddar scream/is a brite bliph obsceme/that tills you that some theme is rung//that sum (ting) is combing/en war (ping) whilst roaming/to strang gull ye song 4 it’s stung
the bliph (ping pong ping)/’s gid (ting) clothes err (ting ting)/n obliter8 (ting) fayth n gladness/yr ayes (ping ping) why den/yr hart (ting ting) fry ten/yr dee send (ting ping ping)/ into maaaaAAAA*
[flatline]
somewhere in our heads we think primitively about the sun.
part of us thinks it is taking a break when it sets. that it is a colder sun in winter, and it cranks up the knob in summer. that it burns. that it is a fire up above us.
even so, a little part of most of us knows that the sun is not on fire, that what seems like burning is actually a nuclear-fusion explosion in a celestial body so huge that its gravity keeps it self-contained and convecting.
a few of us even know that the sun is never above us, that it is always below us, at the bottom of our local gravity well. our words “below” and “above” were invented when space and time was misunderstood, and the inertia of our languages will always hamper our thinking.
there is also the matter of our brains, forged over millennia to meet survival challenges. the next time you see unexpected movement at the edge of your peripheral vision, “out of the corner of your eye” as we primitively put it, you will probably get a microjolt of fear until you are convinced you are not being threatened, and you may behave manically until your blood chemistry re-normalizes.
this is all part of your Great Human Adventure, at the most intimate level, you using your homefired primitive tools to make sophisticated sense out of the life you have, and making the life you have a better one through the thousands of decisions and choices and observations you make every day.
one word of exquisite usefulness I commend to your attention:
enjoyment.
en joy ment.
an involvement with J O Y.
friend, may you know it well, and have it well within you.
crowding midnight are these words
and this sugary (20g) snack
life has love and these absurds
so we don’t irony lack
****
Afterword: publishing this at 11:51pm MST maintains a daily blog-pisting streak begun July 25, 2024.
this sleepy shaver took it on the chin
but does not need a cognac, just a cup
of sweetened lightened coffee to begin
another day. his eyes are wide. he’s up.
Postscript: There is such a thing as too close a shave, even for the sake of a Bad Pun, a play on the ancient saying “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” It took about fifteen minutes to staunch this patch of skin.
To the woman of my daydreams
Velociraptors won’t be welcome here
And Cupid, don’t be stupid, don’t step in
Let’s let our love be natural this year
Enjoying warmth, not frenzy. Let us spin
Nice fluffy yarns where truest fondness wins
Tenacity and real respect hold sway
Intrinsic passion plays with easy grins
Next baby steps are taken, and we say
Each minute gently counts this special day.
long ago our skeletons/were mere calcium deposits on cartilage/but the construction crew brought them to usefulness/in less than a year
and aligned with the spine were esophagus and heart/and twin kidneys singing a riversong/to bilateral symmetry
the bisected and tri-lobed brain/grew a mini-mall of services/to motivate and control and evaluate
and nonhuman migrant workers/were installed in cells/to process oxygen and nutrients
and finally we were brought/from the inside out/innards and all
and there were surprises in every package of us
and we grew more surprises at every stage
(thank heaven and goodness and reality/for the good surprises/and unthank the cruelty of harsh pranks of nature and circumstance/for those surprises that punch and fell)
the best we can do is gird our innards for the wars of acquisition and maintenance and priority
spit in the face of evil and threat
laughing and grinding all the way
showing we have guts
solar promenades
display considerable
flare flair. solar wins!
.
when her fever broke
shattered-fever pieces went
flying all around
.
the warmth of a kiss
may well lead to some heat in
another chakra
.
luke warm luke cooling
luke starting to shiver now
cuts open a beast
.
hearts are never cold
but pitiless souls go to
absolute zero
To Jack Evans on his birthday
In this Valley is a poet/As eloquent as Robert Frost, but warmer.
He manages to be Modest and Majestic with equal immenseness, and a propensity/To shift the focus to his friends, for whom/He produces a neverending supply of care and loving kindness.
His poetry stitches reality-swatches of variable size/into quilts that startle or soothe/or absorb your teardrops/and at the same time, in quantum superposition/the quilt is also a symphony. It is remarkable
What thundering crescendos come from a man/who never raises his voice.
Hardship and grief have never managed/To extinguish the twinkle in his eye.
See him: Walking a hospital corridor as a volunteer, firing up a favorite, obscure film for an appreciative audience, hosting a poetry event with jovial anecdotes and well-deep insights, at home wherever he goes, but most so at the side of his beloved Judy.
Now, please, wish him Happy Birthday, as I do, with love.
the potter is back from hand surgery,/given a green light for unrestricted hand-use. the strictures against water-submersion/and lifting anything heavier than a box of tissues/have been waived goodbye.
now it is time to make stuff./he pretends to be receiving a secret recording á la the old tv spy show “mission: impossible.”
good morning, mr. feldspar. the clay you are looking at is a cone-five porcellaneous clay body colloquially known as “cashmere.” it is fine-grained and will fire white in both bisque and glaze. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use two one-kilogram portions of this clay, sculpting a bird worthy of gallery display with one portion, and crafting a sixteen-ounce mug of swan-like elegance with the other. as always, if either or both creations prove to be unremarkable, you must disavow the existence of one or both unremarkable creations, rewedging the clay, which isn’t cheap, for a future attempt. good luck, frank. this recording will shelf-destruct in five seconds.
and then comes the fun part,/selecting his mission accomplices from the tools in the studio./like dan briggs and then jim phelps of old,/he peruses the candidates one by one/and puts his choices aside./soon he has françois garrote, the wire tool;/marlo and nero v., the sponge siblings;/natasha stiletto, the needle tool;/arnold t. thyme, the wood rib;/joe kingly, the ribbon trimmer;/and cannes openair, the pry tool.
he beams.
“are we ready, lady and gentlemen?”
they rattle, squinch and scratch in nod-equivalents.
the mission leader smiles, dips marko v. in the bucket-water,/and begins.
you should know what you are breathing/ just as with nutrition labels you know what you are ingesting
science to a rescue secular/sensors of a size molecular
so one day the air itself will answer when you ask
and its ai will respond with everything from “pristine” to “ay ay ay”
but meanwhile our meteorologists produce air quality indexes
read them and weep and grab on to your windexes
One with Clay, Image and Text 