lady craighead played the blues
on a stand-up samick
in the ***** room
along side the parsons project
and squabbling dogs
and night moves

stairs creek
up the mezzanine trek
wool sheets slide
on finished floors
little angels
play late into the seventh
(a closing match nearing
the midnight hour)

croaking toads and cicada
sing in the blue moon
musty smells and mothballs
settle deep in the vault
the kettle boils
and cat coils
as the pump house rolls
its heavy drawl

the red phone rings
and bird clock sings
(behind the ruddy stall)
a sleeman variation of the ruy lopez
employed heartily
by the incomparable master jack
marble toast burning
wringer wash churning
chris craft running
near the old carp canoe

rooster calls
and west wind squalls
rustle through the porch screen door
chicken *** pies
and rogue flies linger
a rocker chair placed
near the  sepia face
(softened by the intricate frame)

donkey in tow
(with a fastened ***)
maggie in her dreams
of green tambourines
the nocturnes
reflections
and whispering gospel bells

tractors pull on
the grinder stone
horses lay still
in the mid-day sun
a trump card is fingered
at the furnace click
(crosswords and puzzles are next!)
while the sparrow
and that **** rabid fox
are drowning
deep in castles well

Whenever I see
Mothballs rolling over
To sublime inside
The ***** of
My closet,

I reach in
And touch its coarseness,
The roughness of size;

How come it withdrew
Itself to the world
By shrinking its
Speculations.

Strange though,
but a thought
Came to my mind:

Its state
Is similar
To a feat
Such as mine.

our coolest babysitter lit a long joint and drove us to church
in her well worn '87 oldsmobile with chipped gold paint
a drooping side mirror and a tape player
that smelled like stale london gin mothballs
and a sunset butterfly heart at the same time
it had a deep ocean green calcite mandala
dancing from the windshield mirror
and a steal-your-face tattooed on the back glass
she used to blare brit-pop trying
to make the speakers bleed

that day when they finally oozed she swerved us
left through the other lane and sunday morning fog
to cut a jagged path through thick woods and into an oak tree
with a soundtrack of slow motion oasis and screeching tires
i clammored to the backseat to block the window
glass from your beautiful angelic blonde head as
dew sprayed into the vacancy from the ditch and
when i pulled the seatbelt spiderweb out of your mouth
and lifted you out of the car i was standing
barefoot in a cluster of bright red sumac next to
an ant hill pile of twisted steaming metal
and you were dripping blood from your eye and knees
asking me if we'd be late for sunday school
but you were awake and trying to smile so
we followed the powerlines back to the main road
holding hands dizzy and sweating
worried no one would ever find us
limping while the springtime songbirds
held their tongues for us but
when the hot ringing in my ears finally stopped
the sirens grew loud and close and the
birds too began their wet lipped eulogy

sometimes i think about
missing church that day
when the weather's bad
on nights like last night
sometimes i remember
our babysitter when
the fog rolls in over
the road in the morning
i wonder if she still
gets high on the
good stuff while
she drives or
if she's just
a treehugger

As a child he remembered Cardiff as a city with red asphalt roads and yellow trolley busses. On a Saturday morning his grandfather used to take him in his black Sunbeam Talbot to the grand building of the Council of Music for Wales. There Charles Dixon presided over a large office on the third floor in which there were not one but two grand pianos. At seven a little boy finds one grand piano intimidating, two scary. He was made of fuss of by his grandfather’s colleagues and – as a Queen’s chorister – expected to sing. A very tall lady who smelt strongly of mothballs took him into what must have been a music library, and together they chose the 23rd Psalm to Brother James’ Air and Walford’s Solemn Melody. After his ‘performance’ he was given a book about Cardiff Castle, but spent an hour looking out of the windows onto the monkey-puzzle trees and watching people walking below.
 
50 years later as the taxi from the station took him to the rehearsal studios he thought of his mother shopping in this city as a young woman, probably a very slim, purposeful young woman with long auburn gold hair and a tennis player’s stride. He had just one photo of his mother as a young woman - in her nurse’s uniform, salvaged from his grandparents’ house in the Cardiff suburb of Rhiwbina. Curious how he remembered asking his grandmother about this photograph - who was this person with long hair?– he had never known his mother with anything but the shortest hair.
 
He’d visited the city regularly some ten years previously and he was glad he wasn’t driving. So much had changed, not least the area once known as Tiger Bay, a once notorious part of the city he was sure his mother had never visited. Now it was described as ‘a cultural hub’ where the grand Millennium Opera House stood, where the BBC made Doctor Who, where in the Weston Studio Theatre he’d hear for the first time his Unknown Colour.
 
Travelling down on the train he’d imagined arriving unannounced once the rehearsal had begun, the music covering his search for a strategic seat where he would sit in wonder.  It was not to be. As he opened the door to the theatre there was no music going on but a full-scale argument between the director, the conductor and three of the cast. The repetiteur was busy miming difficult passages. The two children sat demurely with respective mothers reading Harry Potters.
 
The next half hour was difficult as he realised that his carefully imagined stage directions were dead meat. They were going to do things differently and he had that sinking feeling that he was going to have to rewrite or at the very least reorganise a lot of music. He was then ‘noticed’ and introduced to the company – warm handshakes – and then plunged into a lengthy discussion about how the ensemble sequence towards the end of Act 1 could be managed. The mezzo playing Winifred was, he was forced to admit, as physically far from the photos of this artist in the 1930s as he could imagine. The tenor playing Ben was a little better, but taller than W – again a mismatch with reality. And the hair . . . well make up could do something with that he supposed. The baritone he thought was exactly right, non-descript enough to assume any one of the ten roles he had to play. He liked the actress playing Cissy the nurse from Cumbria. The soprano playing Kathleen and Barbara H was missing.
 
He was asked to set the scene, not ‘set the scene’ in a theatrical sense, but say a little about the background. Who were these people he and they were bringing to the stage? He told them he’d immersed himself in the period, visited the locations, spoken to people who had known them (all except Cissy and the many Parisienne artists who would ‘appear’). He saw the opera as a way of revealing how the intimacy and friendship of two artists had sustained each of them through a lifetime chasing the modernist ideal of abstraction. He was careful here not to say too much. He needed time with these singers on their own. He needed time with the director, who he knew was distracted by another production and had not, he reckoned, done his homework. He stressed this was a workshop session – he would rewrite as necessary. It was their production, but from the outset he felt they had to be in character and feel the location – the large ‘painters’ atelier at 48 Quai d’Auteuil.  He described the apartment by walking around the stage space. Here was Winifred’s studio area (and bedroom) divided by a white screen. Here was the living area, the common table, Winifred’s indoor garden of plants, and where Cissy and the children slept. As arranged (with some difficulty earlier in the week) he asked for the lights to be dimmed and showed slides of three paintings – Cissy and Kate, Flowers from Malmaison, and the wonderful Jake’s Bird and White Relief. He said nothing. He then asked for three more, this time abstracts –* Quarante-Huit Quai d’Auteuil, Blue Purpose, and ending with *Moons Turning.
 
He said nothing for at least a minute, but let Moons Turning hang in space in the dark. He wanted these experimental works in which colour begets form to have something of the impact he knew them to be capable of. They were interior, contemplative paintings. He was showing them four times their actual size, and they looked incredible and gloriously vibrant. These were the images Winifred had come to Paris to learn how to paint: to learn how to paint from the new masters of abstraction. She had then hidden them from public view for nearly 30 years. These were just some of the images that would surround the singers, would be in counterpoint with the music.
 
With the image of Moons Turning still on the screen he motioned to the repetiteur to play the opening music. It is night, and the studio is bathed in moonlight. It could be a scene from La Bohème, but the music is cool, meditative, moving slowly and deliberately through a maze of divergent harmonies towards a music of blueness.
 
He tells the cast that the music is anchored to Winifred’s colour chart, that during her long life she constantly and persistently researched colour. She sought the Unknown Colour. He suggests they might ‘get to know the musical colours’. He has written a book of short keyboard pieces that sound out her colour palette. There is a CD, but he’d prefer them to touch the music a little, these enigmatic chords that are, like paint, mixed in the course of the music to form new and different colours. He asks the mezzo to sing the opening soliloquy:
 
My inspiration comes in the form of colour,
of colour alone, no reference to the object or the object’s sense,
Colour needn’t be tagged to form to give it being.
Colour must have area and space,
be directed by the needs of the colour itself
not by some consideration of form.
A large blue square is bluer than a small blue square.
A blue pentagon is a different blue from a triangle of the same blue.
Let the blueness itself evolve the form which gives its fullest expression.
This is the starting-point of my secret artistic creation.
 
And so, with his presentation at a close, he thanks singer and pianist and retreats to his strategically safe seat. This is what he came for, pour l’encouragement des autres by puttin.g himself on the line, that tightrope the composer walks when presenting a new work. They will have to trust him, and he has to trust them, and that, he knows, is some way away. This is not a dramatic work. Its drama is an interior one. It is a love story. It is about the friendship of artists and about their world. It is a tableau that represents a time in European culture that we are possibly only now beginning to understand as we crowd out Tate Modern to view Picasso, Mondrian, Braque and Brancusi.

It’s always been enough to wear the same cardigan for comfort,
This old red chenille one I bought at the wholesale store when I was 15.
It’s funny—it never came with memories, but it has them with me.
I ripped a little hole in the crochet links more than once, bumping into corners and getting it caught on chairs;
I think I’ve always been getting caught on chairs. Snagging my best laid plans on what it means to be a person, wearing a cardigan, but,
It still sits in the back of my closet, in one piece.

I remember wearing it when I needed comfort. When comfort wouldn’t come. When comfort was a love letter delivered to the wrong address. When I read something that wasn’t mine, and became mine nonetheless, in worn out crochet. I should have thrown it out years ago, but it’s mine,
Tattered and torn and sitting in the back of my closet because I’m too afraid the next time I wear it will be the last before it rips completely.

I, on the other hand, have already ripped completely.
Because I could only stay in the closet for 19 years.
I miss that red chenille cardigan. It was there when I was there, in the closet, being me when I shouldn’t have been me,
And it stayed at home when I left for somewhere I thought was better.

I visit my parents. I suppose I still live there, in part, with that red cardigan.
Stuffed into a space that’s small but safe,
The way plants grow withered but tall without sunlight
Or the way I ended up so independent I became lonely.

I define loneliness by how well it wears a red cardigan.
I judge it by how much the snags and small unravelings stick out;
I love it for that. For the sticking out. For the unravelled yarn in place of my tangled emotions,
For the staples that I put in it because I didn’t know how to sew.
My mother could have taught me how to sew, but I exist in a whirlwind of quick fingers and dropped stitches,
And my woman’s place is not the same as hers.

I wish she’d taught me how to make flapjacks, how to repair cardigans, how to love a man;
I wish she hadn’t taught me that my father loved me.
I wish my father had seen an old cardigan and thought of repairs, instead of the old donation box it could be thrown into,
But he was never the type to try and fix things anyway.

I’ll fix his mistakes. I will keep that cardigan, that old thing,
And I will not repair the imperfections that have given it character.
What am I but a red chenille cardigan? Held onto but never worn?
What am I if not something to be contained at the broken seams in hopes that I can preserve myself longer?

So, I am preserved. A fossil. An old relic of Pompeii, frozen in ash, wearing a cardigan that I don’t really fit into anymore,
A wash of red amongst the black and grey wreckage;
Oh, how I have a home in the wreckage. How I am a cardigan atop the ashes.
It doesn’t flutter. There’s no wind to carry it.

In another life, I’d be the wind. But we’ve already established the story, haven’t we? I’m the cardigan.
I’m nothing but thread that’s woven itself into something of minor importance at best.
So, here I am. Minor importance. Worn cardigan. Here I am, wearing it all. Can you see it yet?
It’s riddled with holes, but still in one piece.

I smash open my skull and pry apart my frontal lobe ,
so I could forget how your smile made me felt.

I pull my teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers,
to make me forget the taste your tongue left me.

I tear my fingernails off and replace them with sharpened glass between the ripped flesh,
to forget the tender sweet touch from your hands.

I gorge my eyes out,
so I can forget how you used to look as you slept.

I stab my ear canals with scissors,
to forget the sound of you laughing.

I plug my nose up with mothballs,
so I forget how your clothes smelt when I wore them.

I peel off my skin piece by piece
to forget how soft your skin was.

I can’t forget.

What a shame
When someone loses fame
For doing nothing
Because of a shortcoming

For days, he was liked
Taken care of and prized
But once he had to be away
Got forgotten and castaway

He was called a liar
To be put on fire
He was blamed
Accused and defamed

For, frankly speaking, no reason
Yet he was charged with treason
Days ago was a family member
Now he's put at stake of timber

Indeed, very odd is man
When he is subject to ban
When jealousy driven
And heart-striken

Lucky is a freeman
Who refuses to live in a can
Lucky is the man
Who is not fried on a pan.

Sam Burton(C)







Today is Friday, Oct. 11, the 284 day of 2014 with 81 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter and Venus. Evening stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Uranus and Saturn.
In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was formally opened at Fort Severn, Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen in the first class.

In 1886, Griswold Lorillard of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., fashioned the first tuxedo for men.

A thought for the day:

We all should rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness and selfishness. -- Booker T. Washington


Quotes for the day:

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.

------------------------

All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.

Lin Yutang

"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise."

Oscar Wilde

"It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts."

Robert H. Schuller

My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn't want him to.

Rita Rudner

It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

Katharine Butler Hathaway


TIVIA


What made Lucky Lindy so special?

Charles Lindbergh was not the first man to fly the Atlantic. He was the sixty-seventh. The first sixty-six made the crossing in dirigibles and twin-engine mail planes. Lindbergh was the first to make the dangerous flight alone.

Can your brain hurt?

Only figuratively -- Pain from any injury or illness is always registered by the brain. Yet, curiously, the brain tissue itself is immune to pain; it contains none of the specialized receptor cells that sense pain in other parts of the body. The pain associated with brain tumors does not arise from brain cells but from the pressure created by a growing tumor or tissues outside the brain.


Where can you see a lot of magnets?

More than 7,000 magnets are on display at the Guinness World of Records Museum and Gift Shop, located on the Las Vegas Strip. The exhibit is a portion of the more than 26,000-magnet collection of Louise J. Greenfarb, dubbed "The Magnet Lady," whose accumulation was designated by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's "Largest Refrigerator Magnet" collection.



Poetry

Evening Star

Edgar Allan Poe

'Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold- too cold for me-
There pass'd, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.


Vocabulary

Strudel

noun

: a pastry made from a thin sheet of dough rolled up with filling and baked

Example:

Strudels are usually made with high-gluten flour to increase the malleability of the dough.

"The Supremes belted out a song on the radio, their voices as smooth and flawless as the ribbon of cream Kirsten poured from the pitcher onto her father's strudel, and the whole house smelled cheerfully of pork and spiced apples, laced with a note of butter. — From Rebecca Coleman’s 2011 novel The Kingdom of Childhood



Health and Beauty Tip

Mineral Water for greasy hair

If you have oily hair, use a shampoo that contains zinc. It's okay to condition if you feel you need it -- just don't use it on your roots and scalp.


JOKES

Funny News

From the Churchdown Parish Magazine:
"Would the Congregation please note that the bowl at the back of the Church, labelled 'For The Sick,' is for monetary donations only."

-o-

From The Guardian concerning a sign seen in a Police canteen in Christchurch, New Zealand:
'Will the person who took a slice of cake from the Commissioner's Office return it immediately. It is needed as evidence in a poisoning case."

-o-

From The Times:

A young girl, who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth, was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast-guard spokesman commented: 'This sort of thing is all too common these days.'

-o-

From The Gloucester Citizen:

A *** line caller complained to Trading Standards. After dialling an 0891 number from an advertisement entitled 'Hear Me Moan' the caller was played a tape of a woman nagging her husband for failing to do jobs around the house! . Consumer Watchdogs in Dorset refused to look into the complaint, saying, 'He got what he deserved.'

-o-

From The Barnsley Chronicle:

Police arrived quickly, to find Mr Melchett hanging by his fingertips from the back wall. He had run out of the house when the owner, Paul Finch, returned home unexpectedly, and, spotting an intruder in the garden, had visiting Mrs Finch and, hearing the front door open, had climbed out of the rear window. But the back wall was 8 feet high and Mr Melchett had been unable to get his leg over.

-o-

From The Scottish Big Issue:

In Sydney, 120 men named Henry attacked each other during a 'My Name is Henry' convention. Henry ****** of Canberra accused Henry Pap of Sydney of not being a Henry at all, but in fact an Angus. 'It was a lie', explained Mr Pap, 'I'm a Henry and always will be,' whereupon Henry Pap attacked Henry ******, whilst two other Henrys - Jones and Dyer - attempted ! to pull them apart. Several more Henrys - Smith, Calderwood an! d Andrew s - became involved and soon the entire convention descended into a giant fist fight. The brawl was eventually broken up by riot police, led by a man named Shane.

-o-

From The Daily Telegraph:

In a piece headed "Brussels Pays 200,000 Pounds to Save Prostitutes": "[T]he money will not be going directly into the prostitutes' pocket, but will be used to encourage them to lead a better life. We will be training them for new positions in hotels."

-o-

From The Derby Abbey Community News:

We apologise for the error in the last edition, in which we stated that 'Mr Fred Nicolme is a defective in the police force.' This was a typographical error. We meant of course that Mr Nicolme is a detective in the police farce.

-o-
From The Guardian:

After being charged 20 pounds for a 10 pounds overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to 'Yorkshire Bank Plc are Fascist! *s.' The Bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr *s has asked them to repay the 69p balance by cheque, made out in his new name.

-o-

From The Manchester Evening News:

Police called to arrest a naked man on the platform at Piccadilly Station released their suspect after he produced a valid rail ticket.

-o-

An Austrian circus dwarf died recently when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a hippopotamus. Seven thousand people watched as little Franz Dasch popped into the mouth of Hilda the Hippo and the animal's gag reflex forced it to swallow. The crowd applauded wildly before other circus people realized what had happened.

-o-

An elderly woman at a unit for sufferers of senile dementia passed round a box of mothballs thinking that they were mints. Eleven people were taken to hospital for treatment.

Confessional Etiquette


The new priest is nervous about hearing confessions, so he asks an older priest to sit in on his sessions. The new priest hears a couple confessions, then the old priest asks him to step out of the confessional for a few suggestions.
The old priest says, "Cross your arms over your chest and rub your chin with one hand."

The new priest tries this. The old priest suggests, "Try saying things like, 'I see,' 'yes,' 'go on,' 'I understand,' and 'how did you feel about that?'"

The new priest says those things, trying them out. The old priest says, "Now, don't you think that's a little better than saying, 'Whoa... What happened next?'"

So Funny

A guy purchased Willie Nelson's hair for $37,000. ***** removed his braids and the guy bought them for $37,000. This is the kind of decision you make after spending the day on Willie's tour bus.

David Litterman

Did you hear what happened to Willie Nelson's hair? They sold it. There was an auction this week and a pair of Willie Nelson's braids sold for $37,000. It's a good deal because each braid has a street value of $80,000.

Jimmy Kimmel

Quick Blonde Jokes

Q: Why did the blonde keep putting quarters in the soda vending machine?

A: Because she thought she was winning.

Q: Why did the blonde take 16 friends to the movies?

A: Under 17 not admitted!

Q: Why did the blonde bake a chicken for 3 and a half days?

A: It said cook it for half an hour per pound, and she weighed 125.


Have a very nice Saturday!

Drifting off in mid-day
She is there in my parent's house
Where she should not be
She's never met them
been inside their home

...and besides
She's dead...

Don't know where I drop my brains off
or my heart
when sleeping
I so clearly know this
but I dismiss it
for the moment--
go along with joy
to have her with me once again

She looks so well!
Her pale skin flushed
below her ragged, reddish hair
Wearing peacock blue sateen
as always
dressed to ****
to go somewhere
anywhere
away
from loneliness
from cancer

...and she had included me
on her glorious outing
without title
without honor
I had been her teacher-friend
like an elder wedding guest
she had grown
beyond ...

She helps me dump my canvas bag of poems
on my parent's bed
Where I conceived them
or they conceived me

“What about this one?
Or this is a good one too!
I know you can do this!
You read so well!”
she says
I'm thinking, “This is not like Jenn,
so reversed
for her to give a thought...
and besides, it is not even my event!"

Now she's in my mother's place
in her 1950's closet
pushing hangers across the rail
She would find it--
something
I could wear

I am so transported by the smell
of memories
that I don't care
mothballs, lavender, perfume
I get distracted deep within
almost losing track in the euphoria
to have found my friend again
I lose a moment in the soft fur of mom's mink
clipped together mouth to tail
to form the stole
an ouroboros
With its beady eyes
on me
like death
would drape across my shoulders
given half a chance

When from its mouth of glamorous lies....
Jenn shoves me through life's opened door
She has found that dress!
I wore...

the one with hope, and future's
purple flowers
dropped waist and scalloped neck
Yes, It would do, “Yes!"

But now,
she makes excuse to leave
...of meeting Joe
...of going on ahead...

I know
she must

as this is all some clabbered past
a gift of dreams
Still, I want to hug her
just one last....

but she feels empty...

In embrace
she turns to ash

It was a Saturday night  in the park
his trees were singing
out of tune
his clay pigeons needed to come out
of his closet
for he was parked
on a stool
at his favorite watering hole
amongst a full house
where pairs beat singles
and there he was
shooting blanks
drowning in his sorrows
on his nine lives of lowlife
hoping for a sitting duck in despair
the kind that waddles right up to the Romeo's
with suspense in their hearts
and spontaneity in their wings
a cackle
that he can tackle
to take home
to his garden bed
for him to be fed
but what he got
was for not, naught, knot
wistful thinking
sitting in a bar sinking
for the jukebox played a broken record
finding love in the wrong places
and the joke squarely was on him
for thinking, he could round the bases
looking no further than the escape of his glows
or a crutch of decoys
and sitting ducks
for he was no Romeo
yet
there he was still, like steel,
a stole away in society
forlorn, preserved
like mamas mothballs tucked away
in basement storage
squandering the forage
for there were no triple treats
tonight for him
or forever sounds grim
for his reality check gone dim
or
no eye candy
for his heart beats
no picnic
for his ****
and all the bottled whiskey
could not drown out his pain
as his eyes were slain
as the sitting ducks turned
from his fantasy corner
phantomlike
and though
he's sitting at the bar, a loner
reminded that in cards of life
pairs beat singles
and in his worn hand
familiarly holds a lonely joker
for it's like he tries
and its
like his sitting ducks
are like hoofed deer
and his little sweets,
are spooked
hoofing
away from his
now darken forest
like red ants at his picnic
and the gleam in his eyes turned
to the poorest
its
its
as if his life and watering hole
was condemned
his garden bed cut at the stem
it is as if he has a red vest on
and a rifle don
and all the hoofed deer
panic
looking at him in fear
like he's manic
or maybe it's his eyes
that hold dark skies
he orders another double
trouble
for what else is there to do
on his Saturday night
than to sit in a bubble
forever sounds grim
but sing him a sweet hymn
he says please
to wit as he steals peeks
at the bartenders triple treats
like a bee to a hive
his joker still strikes a beat
if only he can find a bolster
for his gun needs a holster
and a deer in the headlights
would be hard to find
the confession now told, tolled, towed
through tears
the guy in the bar window
is me, sitting
resigned

Logan Robertson

10/18/2018

Leaving well enough alone
I go home
where only your words serve to burn me
remind me to learn that to be free
is to be one with
oneself
And alone very selfishly I turn over another leaf.

Oh thief, come then and take me
and let us not tarry
marry me into your night.

Out of sight out of mind
the wallpaper lines the drawers in the wardrobe
and mothballs like meteors
flash warnings to creatures
do not enter
and the scent of her lingers
I lick my fingers as if I could taste her
as if I could paste her to the walls.

On the inside of life where I fall into tomorrow
where yesterday lives in the crook of the hollow
below my cheeks and today sneaks a peek but decides to return
to a place I would spurn
Oh if only I could.

She is still here or there
somewhere in the recess wearing that Westwood creation
I station and anchor myself to this point
and at the point of a pin
where the needle grows thin
I jab it into and under my skin and I blunder
along wildly
in panic, but that's nothing new
to a fool who would do such strange things.

Eventually relenting
and I on repenting she brings me to her
here or somewhere each place names the same as the last
and each one disappears as fast as it came.

This is a round about big dipper,dip for a duck
childhood fair ground game that we play
we all want a coconut
but some don't want to pay.

She comes to me to say
'it's okay it'll be fine'
and each time I believe
until the mothballs remind me she leaves and I grieve
And the drawers remain shut
the wardrobe is but another reminder
a laughter at me
one day I will find her
again.

It's a Thursday evening
and over par for the course I'm sitting
in a sandtrap.
The lie is bad,
I'm  buried next to a watering hole
in the wall.
I can't get out.
The half truth is I'm a drunk
a sea of sorrows.
Even the dolphins, I shed no mercy.
The real truth is I'm ***
anchored to a barstool,
barnacles from the dead sea
hanging on the four legs.
If this bar stool ever came to life
the voice would bubble to the surface,
get me to dry dock.
How fortuitous the wind in my sails,
finding every sandtrap
and waving at the mothballs.
Blind to letting the barnacles take it's course.
Corrosion creeping up on me, like its
relative.
Who cares about the long lost voice
or the red ants at his picnic.
Or if Uncle lost his strokes he never had.
Did someone say shipwreck?
I order another double,
with fire in my eyes,
adding another burn to my stomach.
I look at the bartenderess
and my eyes don't lie.
She's my type.
My head tilts this way and that.
I see people starring back at me.
If only they knew how the ball bounces.

Logan Robertson

12/21/2018