Archive

Tag Archives: Gary Bowers

longwalker

walking has saved me

.

i walk away my heart disease and my heartache

the sidewalk my cradle

the canal bank my oasis

as I grow and shrink mountains

and press a metronomic message onto the earth

.

when I walk I fly above the haze

brain singing with insurge of nutrient

delivered by my quickened pulsing bloodstream

.

every walk is two journeys

the lesser’s destination is perhaps a convenience store

or a bus stop or the remaining distance that will exceed 10000 steps for the day

the greater’s destination

is fulfillment

of a lifetime

mission to follow

the sacred mandate:

keep going keep going keep going keep going

Change a month & catch a Thrill/Sketch a drooping Daffodil/Plan some stuff you never do/Don’t be scared–it’s only New

Monthly Renewal

My O my, the Calendar has flipp’d a fresh page over

Out goes August; in September; cooling may ensue

Nonetheless the night sky now includes a blown-up Nova, ‘n

There in Horsehead Nebula some brand new stars are due

Here on Earth’s September we obey unwritten law

Let the lightning flash & thunder growl with sis boom ba

Yay for fresh new months that well reward our wherewithal

Three Score and Ten and Six she has in years

Yet childlike, girlish, age-defiant young.

Through travel, trouble, tragedy she steers

Yet from a well her merry laughter’s sprung.

.

Last century we strolled a bookstore’s aisles.

She managed; I received. But then a gap

Would intervene, of choices, time and miles;

She moved away; I raised a child; oh snap!

.

But strike a match and kindle up some hope

For more Adventure. Red-wine glasses clink

And conversation comes in gushing streams.

I learn it’s not enough to merely cope

When All That, Bag of Chips, AND Kitchen Sink

Include the lovely Woman of my Dreams!

.

somehow Dorothy/became Aunt Dodo. i tell/you, it was aukward.

a hummingbird worked/as a dental hygienist/known as Numbing Bird.

blue-footed boobies/in throes of erotic love/act like the Rockettes.

the hood of my car/was sarcastically bombed/with two Mockingturds.

when the Pigeon/indignantly walked by it/flipped me a Human.

.

Fun fact: My mother really had an Aunt Dodo. I do not know if her real name was Dorothy.

A man in a flimsy T-shirt and polyester running shorts and running shoes affixed to snowshoes with circular-shaped surfaces runs

On a two-inch blanket of freshly-fallen snow  on a flat two-acre field on a farm whose owners have given him permission to run for an hour on their land.

He is also wearing glasses that provide a visual readout of what the drone flying overhead is recording. The drone moves according to his voice commands. His last command was for the drone to maintain a position twenty meters over his head, focal point the surface of the snow, field of view to include the running man and a circle of ten meters’ diameter with him at the center.

The conditions are ideal. The temp is just at freezing and it is windless and the snow is doing a remarkable job of retaining the impressions of the snowshoes.

What the man is doing is drawing. He himself is the dot-drawing stylus. An inset in the views reen in his glasses shows him the entire field on which he is running, with his position on the field represented by a green dot, and with his footstrikes trailing him represented as blue dots.

He has not been running long, but he is already on the second iteration of the array of comic-book-style panels that will contain the images of real-time running that he is doing now. An hour will give him enough time to fill in the panels with line drawings with enough detail to discern his facial features.

“Bogie, I want a drink,” he says, and the drone swoops down and dangles tubing connected to the modest water supply it is carrying. Three swallows is sufficient.

“Resume position above my head.” Bogie whizzes upward.

“Play ‘Running On Empty’ by Jackson Browne, any live version with David Lindlay,” he tells his audio feed.

The music starts.

“I effing love technology, I do I do I do,” he exults as he runs, his breath making a puff-pattern of condensation.

once upon a time we romeos and juliets were fuzzy-headed puppies as far as love was concerned

giddy and whizzing through the high-voltage fun ride of young lust

making it up as we went along

clumsily knocking things over or up

weeping and dusting ourselves off

and growing and learning as decades pass

and we necessarily change

because

our seasoned romeo does not suit a galadrielized juliet

and we have largely shed many of the illusions that drove our pubescent chariots

.

still the feelings forged in adolescence linger

even over subsequent decades

how nice it still and always is to kiss

how nice to love

and how astonishing it is to fall into the deepness of a lover’s eyes

and how blossomous it is to be stupefied by the exchange of adorations

and to rediscover what it is to be fibrously alive

.

elderly lovers seem creepy or cute to many

but callow romeos and jejune juliets have no clue what delicate layers

and fathomless depths

may be found

if the search for true love is made lifelong

and the willingness to love wholeheartedly persists

you are mildly lucky in love

with a romance beginning to bloom

and the exes and ohs

as the spiciness grows

make a grandma suggest “get a room”

.

soon your fantasies focus on one

and the others get sketchy and blurred

and the choosing will cost

opportunities lost

with the fading of daydreams absurd

.

as your multiverse gladly collapses

with a dwindlement sealed with a kiss

to clear all the fog you thus

make it monogamous

two souls entangled in bliss

My car,

A 2023 Kia Soul named Celeste,

Got a wash today.

She’d gotten the spattery dust-film that comes with rain

So this time round I paid two bucks extra for wax.

Nowadays

A car owner may get asked CAR WASH TODAY? on the pump display that has the card reader,

And a YES answer gives you three options

And I chose the wax one

And the receipt I got for my gas also printed the code

That I entered when I went through the carwash drive-thru

That greenlit the wax job as a pleasant nonhuman voice asked me to please pull ahead slowly.

.

Celeste is clean now

But there’s 20% chance of rain tomorrow,

40% Friday,

But the wax might make a difference in precipitation residue

But I’m pretty sure Celeste is indifferent

But auto-respect must be paid.