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Hurt Transitory

A shadow dot moves across the sun. The innermost planet, Mercury, is transiting. It is throwing its huge little shadow across us, two planets out.

Fallen Rome left us wisdom in her death throes: Sic [Thus] transit [it passes,] gloria [the glory] mundi [of the Earth].

¿Que pasa? ask my Hispanic friends. And one answer was my junior college newspaper, El Tiempo Pasando.

Children are wasting away in at least three global regions. Something is frightfully wrong with the way various influencers are conducting themselves, since this very moments there is so much abundance of foodstuffs that no one on Earth need go hungry.

Some of us hurt, and some of us want to hurt others of us. “That is the way of the world,” we hear. But the world is brave, and the world is new, and the way of the world is as it has never before been.

¿Que pasa?

It it up to us billions.

Today I sculpted a chess-piece perched bird, a pawn, the pawn that remembers Emily Dickinson’s description of Hope as “the thing with feathers.” And if my pawn of Hope makes her transition to the other end of the chessboard, she may transform,

Actualize,

And free us.

the tilt of the planet offers up the north to the sun/and new warmth turns crystal to flow

the new heat activates an earthy redolence/activates hormonal response in creatures

and in the smelters of certain minds/the metal of new resolve is refined

hope shakes off sleep and rises

now, gullible and lullable are twins./but sanctioned hanky-panctity is not./the horizon infinity run alas is a race nobody wins/and a moment may be finite as a dot.

when we are fools in lust and greed and wanting/and get our hopes up faster than a flare./some hopes shatter, some dissolve, some are killed and then start haunting/some will drive us to the outskirts of despair.

snapshot

so this is after
a bowl of stewed carrots
and a cup of coffee
and before a shave and shower

that indeterminate time
when my drawing and i have a tussle

“redeeming love” is the name of the movie
that i watch and then pause to draw more
it is about gold-strike times
and a dirt farmer and a luscious prostitute
he is bound and resolute to marry her
she is scarred from abandonment
and the ugliness that goes with the life

it’s impossible to say
what influence watching the movie
has on my drawing
except that watching the movie is strangely soothing
because despite the tawdriness and pain
the title promises glory by the end
and i need that hope right now
for my drawing
(notice the word DEFEAT in lower right)
and my day
(seems like yesterday i did my laundry
and not four days ago
and i go out of town tomorrow
and haven’t booked a room yet
and i want to finish this drawing
and another more important drawing
and and and and and)
and my life

old guy getting older
full of stewed carrots
coffee
and redeeming hope

NOTE: This poem originally appeared in my Notes in Facebook, under the title “lonely for.” I changed the title because it was bet-hedging and wishy-washy.

lonely for a woman

lonely for a woman

lately the phrase “lonely for a woman” flits around
there in my uncaring-of-correctness skull
but like a hummingbird this morning it is hovering

demanding to be seen and acknowledged

well ok “lonely for a woman” i see you i acknowledge you

and it is embarrassing to acknowledge your taunting truth

sure you are true but you are not enough
there are a thousand flavors of loneliness and you imply lust alone
you say nothing for loneliness of moments
loneliness for those firsts that amp the mundane into the spectacular
first look not just into a pair of eyes but into the beyond of them
first deeper-meaning laughter first high-voltage touch

and yes first intimacy first joining

and here comes another hummingbird thought
side by side with “lonely for a woman”
this one is “unlucky in love again and again”

the beat of its hovering wings makes an irritating noise

now there’s a whole flock of them
“desperate, aren’t we?” “you’re not getting any younger” “what did you expect?”

and there is the background hissy rasp of many more

i dismiss the birds i cast them out
i have known love and i will know it again
and though it is instructive to be in the desert of ‘lonely for . . .’

it is dangerous to seek relief instead of rightness

i create a hummingbird

this one says “any day now”

that’s all i need on any given day

Image

This is dedicated to all of us who have struggled against a bad habit and succeeded, however fleetingly.

Here are the words to the double (and double-entendre) acrostic:

YO! Quit that AWFUL habit! Play it straight
Your quality of H O P E will escalate
Obsequious, the vice purveyors win
Obliquely when the helpless rack up sins
Ubiquity might keep us on the trail
Uniqueness and good Purpose gets us hale

Astute observers will have noticed six of the letter Q lined up on the left side of the poem/array, and six of the letter P lined up on the right. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I have done my best to mind my Ps and Qs. [wicked smile]