It was more often than
not on Friday nights
when the countryside
was drained of bachelor
farmers attracted to the
chair o' planes bright lights
and bumpers at the carnival.

The latter occasionally had
a few extra fast ones which
were worth waiting for.

Side by side they sat eyeing
up their target with head on
collisions that caused the
launching of spectacles,
watches, ear rings, but also,
false teeth scattered on metal
floors which became the
new focus of devilment.

Drivers aiming to crush them
before the sessions end, but
what strikes me as odd, now
in hindsight, nobody told us it
was supposed to be the Dodgem's.

It would be nice to pick up eggs for you while I’m out
Save you some time
Knowing you won’t be hungry tonight

It would be nice to wash our cars together
Sharing the bucket
Shining our chrome bumpers to reflect our smiles

It would be nice to go to a wedding together
Wearing our new shoes
Dancing with the crowd and seeing only you

It would be nice to take a walk around the block
Holding hands
Feeling your warm fingers intertwined with mine

It would be nice to pick up shells on the beach
Footprints in the sand
Bending over to pick up that one perfect shell

It would be nice to look at the full moon
Moonlight shines bright
Illuminating our bodies we enjoy our nakedness

It would be nice to tell you good-night
Fluff up my pillow
Falling asleep cuddling you, I am content

A showdown on Sunset
At sundown the two met
A breakdown of Corvettes
Cellphones drawn by execs
From holsters, my wild west
On speed dial is the best
Lawyers to slow down, lay to rest
This showdown of suits neatly pressed

It always intrigued him how a group of people entering a room for the first time made decisions about where to sit. He stood quietly by a window to give the impression that he was looking out on a wilderness of garden that fell steeply away to a barrier of trees. But he was looking at them, all fifteen of them taking in their clothes, their movements, their manners, their voices (and the not-voices of the inevitably silent ones), their bags and computers. One of them approached him and, he smiling broadly and kindly, put his hand up as a signal as if to say ‘not just now, not yet, don’t worry’, or something like that.

This smile seemed to work, and he thought suddenly of the woman he loved saying ‘you have such a lovely smile; the lines around your eyes crinkle sweetly when you smile.’ And he was warmed by the thought of her dear nature and saw, as in a photo playing across his nervous mind, the whole of her lying on the daisied grass when, as ‘just’ lovers, they had visited this place for an opening, when he could hardly stop looking at her, always touching her gently in wonder at her particular beauty. In the garden they had read together from Alice Oswald’s Dart, the river itself just a short walk away . . .

Listen,
a
lark
spinning
around
one
note
splitting
and
mending
­it

As he finally turned towards his class and walked to a table in front of the long chalkboard, half a dozen hands went up. He had to do the smile again and use both hands, a damping down motion, to suggest this what not the time for questions – yet. He gathered his notebook and went to the grand piano. He leafed through his book, thick, blue spiral-bound with squared paper, and, imagining himself as Mitsuko Uchida starting Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, fingers placed on the keys and then leaning his body forward to play just a single chord. He held the chord down a long time until the resonance had died away.

‘That’s my daily chord’, he said, ‘Now write yours.’

Again, more hands went up. He ignored them. He gave them a few minutes, before gesturing to a young woman at the back to come and play her chord. Beside the piano was a small table with a sheet of manuscript paper and a Post-It sticker that said, ‘Please write your chord and your name here’. And, having played her chord, she wrote out her chord and name – beautifully.

He knelt on the floor beside a young man (they were all young) at the front of the class. He liked to kneel when teaching, so he was the same height, or lower, as the person he as addressing. It was perhaps an affectation, but he did it never the less.

‘Tell me about that chord,’ he said, ‘A description please’.
‘I need to hear it again.’
‘OK’, there was a slight pause, ‘now let’s hear yours.’
‘I haven’t written one’, the reply had a slightly aggressive edge, a ‘why are you embarrassing me?’ edge.
‘OK’, he said gently, and waved an invitation to the girl next to him. She had no trouble in doing what was asked.

Next, he asked a tall, dark young man how many notes he had in his chord, and receiving the answer four, asked if he, the young man, would chose four voices to sing it. This proved rather controversial, but oh so revealing – as he knew it would be. Could these composers sing? It would appear not. There was a lot of uncertainty about how it could be done. Might they sound the notes out at the piano before singing (he had shaken his head vigorously)? But when they did, indeed performed it well and with conviction, he congratulated them warmly.

‘Hand your ‘chord’ to the person next to you on your right. Now add a second chord to the chord you have in front of you please.’

Several minutes later, the task done, he asked them to pass the chords back to their original owners. And so he continued adding fresh requirements and challenges. – score the chords for string quartet, for woodwind quartet (alto-flute, cor anglais, horn, baritone saxophone – ‘transposition hell !’ said one student), write the chords as jazz chord symbols, in tablature for guitar, with the correct pedal positions for harp.

Forty minutes later he felt he was gathering what he needed to know about this very disparate group of people. There were some, just a few, who refused to enter into the exercise. One slight girl with glasses and a blank face attempted to challenge him as to why such a meaningless exercise was being undertaken. She would have no part in it – and left the room. He simply said, ‘May I have your chord please?’ and, to his surprise, she agreed, and with some grace went to the table by the piano and wrote it out.

A blond Norwegian student said ‘May we discuss what we are doing? I am here to learn Advanced Composition. This does not seem to be Advanced Composition.’

‘Gladly’, he said, ‘in ten minutes when this exercise is concluded, and we have taken a short break.’ And so the exercise was concluded, and he said, ‘Let’s take 15 minutes break. Please leave your chords on the desk in front of you.’

With that announcement almost everyone got out their mobile phones, some leaving the room. He opened the windows on what now promised to be a warm, sunny day. He went then to each desk and photographed each chord sheet, to the surprise and amusement of those who had remained in the room. One declined to give him permission to do so. He shrugged his shoulders and went on to the next table. He could imagine something of the conversation outside. He’d been here before. He’d had students make formal complaints about ‘his methods’, how these approaches to ‘self-learning’ were degrading and embarrassing, belittling even. I’m still teaching he thought after 30 years, so there must be something in it. But he had witnessed in those thirty years a significant decline in musical techniques, much of which he laid at the feet of computer technology. He thought of this kind of group as a drawing class, doing something that was once common in art school, facing that empty page every morning, learning to make a mark and stand by it. He had asked for a chord, and as he looked at the results, played them in his head. Some had just written a text-book major chord, others something wildly impossible to hear, but just some revealed themselves as composers writing chords that demonstrated purpose and care. Though he could tell most of them didn’t get it, they would. By the end of the week they’d be writing chords like there was no tomorrow, beautiful, surprising, wholly inspiring, challenging, better chords than he would ever write. Now he had to help them towards that end, to help them understand that to be an  ‘advanced composer’ might be likened to being an ‘advanced motorist’ (he recalled from his childhood the little badges drivers once put proudly on their bumpers – when there were such things – now there’s a windscreen sticker). To become an advanced motorist meant learning to be continually aware of other motorists, the state of the road, what your own vehicle was doing, constantly looking and thinking ahead, refining the way you approached a roundabout, pulled up at a junction. He liked the idea of transferring that to music.

What he found disturbing was that there were a body of students who believed that a learning engagement with a professional composer, someone who made his living, sustained his life with his artistic practice, had to be a confrontation. The why preceded, and almost obliterated, the how.

In the discussion that followed the break this became all too clear. He let them speak, and hardly had to answer or intervene because almost immediately student countered student. There evolved an intriguing analysis of what the class had entered into, which he summarised on a flip chart. He knew he had some supporters, people who clearly realised something of the worth and interest of the exercises. He also had a number of detractors, some holding quasi-political agendas about ‘what composition was’. After 20 minutes or so he intervened and attempted a conclusion.

‘The first rule of teaching is to understand and be sympathetic to a student’s past experience and thus to their learning needs, which in almost every situation will be different and various. This means for a teacher holding to an idea of what might, in this case, constitute ‘an advanced composer’. I hold to such an idea. I’ve thought about this ‘idea’ quite deeply and my aim is to provide learning opportunities to let as many of you as possible be enriched by that idea. You are all composers, but there is no consensus about what being a composer is, what the ‘practice of composition’ is. There used to be, probably until the 1970s, but that is no more. ‘

‘You may think I was disrespectful in not wishing to engage in any debate from the outset. I had to find a way to understand your experience and your learning needs. In 40 minutes I learnt a great deal. My desire is that you all go away from each session knowing you have stretched your practice as composers, through some of the skills and activities that make up such a practice. You all know what they are, but I intend to add to these by taking excursions into other creative practices that I have studied and myself been enriched by. I also want to stretch you intellectually – as some of my teachers stretched me, and whose example still runs through all I do.

Over the next seven days you are to compose music for a remarkable ensemble of professional musicians. I see myself as helping you (if necessary) towards that goal, by setting up situations that may act as a critical net in which to catch any problems and difficulties. I know we are going to fight a little over some of my suggestions, the use of computer notation I’m sure will be one, but I have my reasons, and such reasons contribute towards what I see as you all developing a holistic view of composing music as both a skill and an art form. I also happen to believe, as Imogen Holst once said of Benjamin Britten, that composing music is a way of life . . .

With that he walked to the window and looked out across that wilderness of green now bathed in sunshine. He felt a presence by his shoulder. Turning he suddenly recognised standing before him a young man, bearded now, and yes, he knew who he was. At a symposium in Birmingham the previous summer he had talked warmly and openly to this composer and jazz pianist in a break between sessions, and just a few weeks previously in London after a concert this young man had approached him with a warm greeting. Empathy flowed between them and he was grateful as he shook his hand that this could be. She had been with him at that concert and he remembered afterwards trying to recall his name for her and where they’d met. She was holding his arm as they walked down Exhibition Road to their hotel and he was so full of her presence and her beauty no wonder his memory had failed him.

‘Brilliant,’ the young man said, ‘Thank you. Just so much to think about.’

And he could say nothing, suddenly exhausted by it all.

We, the invisible reasons for your problems, blind ourselves to the
dismal inevitability that we will
suffocate because you refuse to stop
the pillaging of the future for the sake of your own ******* lineage being able to further itself and potentially give you a chance to again close your mind and scream as loud as you can when confronted with your own toxicity

We, the ones who humbly take the bludgeoning from your self-proclaimed pious hand, know these chains are only on your bleeding wrists and ankles.

We, the silent and the broken, know Santa Muerta by the nicknames she had in college and all accompanying wildness she brought in her wake.
We still will stroke your hair while you
throw your tantrums and wail about what is and isn't fair on your deathbeds.

We will burn the mattress and all while cheering you on on your flight into the night sky you ignored for a lifetime.

We, the servants of streaming digits and stewards of bottled stardust, will create stories about how it wasn't your fault and how you shouldn't be hated for bringing the world crashing into the excrement of wasted potential so our children know there was a choice to be made.

We, the overly polite pariahs pry laughs and love and lust and learning from looming catastrophe like Burroughs writing Naked Lunch with a glassy eyed stare that burned holes in the veil hiding the tide of partially coagulated blood and ******* that YOUR world preached as milk and honey.

We, the proof in the moldy pudding still finding time to rot, will burn tobacco fields in your honor just to dance while getting drunk on the breaths you'll never waste.

We, the lovers of questions and haters of creeds, let tears stream in the hope that they are not considered part of our body's 75 percent while fantasizing about your ghosts seeing them and the dehydration they may be in spite of and quiet your tired old yelling and shaking of fists at the clouds when overcome by the slight sadness that whispers "its too late" lovingly into your ear.

We, the lovers, the thieves, the reviled, the *******, the witches, the junkies, the ******, the reptiles and worms under the rocks society deems unusable and misshapen, will be the ones lifting the crowns off your corpses and throwing them high as graduates do when full of a hope only ever dashed by themselves.

We, the drooling monsters you vehemently deny anything besides the cramped closets or the space between bed and floor in childhood bedrooms, will be the Valkyries to descend onto the blood-choked battlefield you set aside for your souls to suffer on and offer you respite in the form of soggy bread and wildflower honey while  ravens and jackdaws bicker over the eyes and fingers of those that once showed us how to ride a bike or drunkenly beat us beneath our favorite trees or touched us in dark rooms in ways that would chase Love away from the shadow of our hearts until we finally climbed high enough to see it all as someone screaming of war and bravery while running from the sound of steel biting steal because their protectors talked so highly of honor and duty that it seemed as if it were God and Adam touching fingertips on the arched ceilings of youth. that, then was painted on the crumbling walls of abandoned houses they would secretly indulge on the forbidden fruit soaking pages of a faded **** magazines or up skirts of blushing  girls who put on their mother's prudishness until fingers pushed past
cotton and virtue alike to the warm center they both melted in.

We, the unsung and numb, walk in spirals while the complexity you rebuked as devil-born becomes the sigils of yet-to-be kingdoms bringing about golden age after golden age in the distant mists rolling over hills and valleys of memories of moments yet to coalesce into rigid experience.

We, the eyes weeping blood atop crumbling pyramids, have seen the walls you want to build in futures dissolved in the winds blowing dust over the dream-roads we skip down and how it resembles the one you built to keep your heart from breaking from the pressing mass of what you can't file away as noise or heresy or communist propaganda;
We drew throbbing ***** and dripping ***** on all the blueprints we came across and tucked them back into the secret compartments of wardrobes and roll-tops passed down through generations.

We, the keepers of the singing stones you traded for cheap concrete, will embrace the tiny souls you neglected out of ignorance to the existential snake oil pitch you broke every tooth biting down on all because the salesman reminded you of your drunk father or mother imposing their wills like you make shadow puppets dance on peeling wallpaper in the silence that ensued after they had passed out on creaky couches reeking of Lucky Strikes and spilled ***** while the shine of the staticky T.V. set covered them like the blanket no one ever put over their slumbering forms because of those infinite lists of excuses used to skirt the skirmishes of showing any kind compassion even if they alone were sole witness to it.

We, the pieces of self the deathbed "you" sent hurtling backwards through time to shine lights on the siege seething at the gates of what you stand for, are only holding those lanterns to show you that fleeing is futile and your death is just a hallway with a door that leads to the knowledge that life is not a cell to watch time morph into tally lines scratched into cold stone as if they were epitaphs for the seconds bet and lost at the roulette table crafted from any slave ship the ocean never swallowed.

We, the flames mimicking those dancing girls you longed to have squeal under the idea of your thrusting masculinity amidst the graffiti on the bathroom stalls in seedy dive-bars or the paupers playing prince you follow giggling with hope in hand like a bouquet of baby's breath and daisies for that one day they would stop and turn and smile so handsomely that your knees would shatter against one another and wedding chapels would bend down to tie tin cans to bumpers of beat up Buicks and Oldsmobiles your fathers give dowry and the crowd could watch "just married" poorly written in shaving cream on the back window grow small until it disappeared over the horizon.

We, the dreamers, are tired of sleeping and are in need of a old tree to swing from, to bury our dreams like beloved pets under, and watch as it lets its leaves fall to the hungry earth that is more patient then anyone closed eyed and humming ancient syllables beneath crooked branches could ever be.

All the trees you climbed and kicked and fell in love under have died from too many hearts around intials being carved into them or were used to make fascist pamphlets you yourself passed out at churchs mistaking the mask with bone structure or the river for the people it swept to sea.

We are laughing;
like a loving mother at her clumsiness on display in her cackling child and not like the crowds gazing at the sideshow stage as the curtains pull back and stage lights illuminating John Merrick's flesh and the intricate dissonance it lent to minds.
Minds that afforded only sips of bliss as monotonous stints on factory floors but were preached about like they were some heaven-sent golden cobblestones laid lovingly all the way
to the beach where Heimdall will one day sound his horn, one foot feeling the grit of the edge of the world and the other washed clean for the grave we will all step in.

So, all these words, all these images, all of it is intended to be a moon so all the stagnate tide pools that have forgotten their origin and the freedom they used to give form to lesser forms they forage forgetfulness from.

We, the ones beneath you on the climb to the summit of our collective potential, beg you to think of something beside yourself when taking a ****.

It is not just ******* in the wind if there isnt wind and we are right below you and dying of thirst.

It is not an inalienable right if someone else is deprived of the same.

It is not Heaven's gate if the brilliant gild has a melting point or if it remains latched to any soul's approach.

It is not "liberal *******" or a myth if whole flocks of birds fall from the sky or schools of fish wash up on beaches while people snap photographs for their feed.

It is not "god" if love dispels it like smoke hanging in the kitchens your great grandmother sat in and told you about a witch shapeshifting into dogs without heads to scare drunks stumbling home because she was a ******* racist.

It is not just food if someone's organs fail from starvation that even the worms and flies are free from.

You wave your banners and let your war-horns echo and you wear your ignorance as armor.

We, the eaters of life and death, will chisel a name into stone and pick your bones clean if you think we should march to the sounds of drums and trumpets just because you were stupid enough to think it was anything other than your masters convincing you to whip yourselves ****** because "at least God hath been kind enough to give you a purpose" or "he works in mysterious ways".

**** that.

Look at what it has brought out of the swirling sea of " all that could be" while you write the same song about how shiny and numerous the scales of the prize are.

We are not responsible for pillaging God's bounty.

We are the bounty and our emptiness and lack of foresight are in jeweled bowls at your feet, but in your hubris you believe it to be the slaves that come to wash the dirt from between your toes.

We are Death and She is the wet-nurse that will give us intimacy to fertilize our hearts by refusing us her breast but turning our heads to your silhouettes shambling off the edge of existence far off in the distance only a decade or less could be confused for.

[AS ONE VOICE WE SING/SANG/HOWL:
Lux amor potentia restituant propositum dei in terris.]

As if it were as easy as holding the hand of a dying tyrant afraid they cannot the luminous terminus while wearing your father's face as a mask to trick radiant angels or the contortions of gods reeking of struck matches by those trembling and their swirling black hearts closed to the breeze carrying leaves celebrating their liberation and caressing a cheek they were too ashamed to kiss when opportunity was their ally.

We shouldn't hate these piles of skulls all parroting the same axioms to those who only show up to add another or leave an empty bottle turned into a candle holder, wax dripped down the neck and froze before any trace of tallow could finally unite with the dirt it longs to become one with;
icicles hanging from the eaves of abandoned asylums.

This place was supposed to be alot of things but that is what lead THEM to drown in the sound of buzzing bees, birdsong, and abundance in all directions.

I suggest we stop trying to squeeze it into a shoebox we scribbled Promised Land on and just let it be the open armed paradise it inherently is.
Let it be the heart and home as well as the hostile territory because it is only ever that and what we wont find in any Oracle's Prophecy.

I'll end my rambling with a question and it's answer.

How do you turn a police station into a hospital and a schoolhouse?

Burn it to the ******* ground.

steel
oil
engineering
labor
converge
round a
Rocket 88
dead man’s
curve

prescient
precocious
capitalists
concoct
Edsels
Vegas
Che­velles

leaping
Impalas
leak
oil
staining
every
American
driveway

Pintos
chase
Gremlins
across
The Great Plains
gassing up
at
Rt 66
fillin
stations

scramblin
Midnight
Ramblers
detour to
take refuge
with Goats in
Big Sky
Indian
garages

440
Mustangs
nip
327
Stingrays
and
Mach IV
Cobras
get
snake bit
by Dart
wielding
Mopar
muscle
cars

long fins
chrome bumpers
and round fenders
still get bent in
Havana

but

Motor City is broke
nations outta gas
whole **** country
needs an overhaul

Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston: Rocket 88

Nelson Riddle: Route 66

7/19/13
Oakland
jbm

remember the melding
of gilmore and bing
the springfield gates
and desmond ring

remember the trojans
and fools in the pack
sea fair jeans
and corkscrew flat

remember the cabin
and *****’s garage
the gary point dunes
and moncton mirage

remember the warehouse
the water logged seats
tin foil caps
and simple retreats

remember the cave
and turn on the cut
emery’s mini
and hamilton’s hut

remember the burger
and shake in the air
bubs in the back
with little despair

remember the valley
and 66 ford
burgundy lips
and samworth’s chord

remember the plainsman
a 7 inch log
the ***** old frenchmen
and bore-*** hog

remember the javelin
and mushay’s wheels
beaumont’s baggie
and jennifer beals

remember tough charlie
tossing brad rand
the belyae roundhouse
and beer in the sand

remember park polo
and scaling of firs
sleeping in rafters
at 8 bucks per

remember the mayflower
and brothers von grant
the max air follies
and chivalrous rant

remember the flipper
the floyd and the clap
banana boat sunday
and pemberton trap

remember the purples
the rasp in the street
the oliver jokers
and shady retreat

remember the gators
and brick house café
a flash in the pan
and crib cult stay

remember the church
and talbs on the bridge
goofy’s memoirs
and cypress ridge

remember smaldino
whom perry cut short
***** and a ****
and moria’s port

remember the zuker
and gilligan’s isle
the pep chew bust
and 8 tooth smile

remember the action
at blundell and one
the nauseous fumes
and pump house run

remember the canyon
and rock on the cliff
a tourniquet bind
that kept us adrift

remember lake skaha
and jvc tunes
the j bain query
and peach fest goons

remember the irons
and broad entry beads
the alexander boys
we must pay heed

remember the gates
the 12 hole stare
the hospital bed
and ky affair

remember the farmhouse
an open air deck
the john deere tractor
and cowboy neck

remember the wheat field
and jimmy crack corn
the burlington plaza
and fraser street ****

remember the pincers
and wee ***** white
the concubine fractures
and strong overbite

remember the carving
portrayed at the scene
the billy goat battles
a young man’s dream

remember lord brezhnev
and moby the ****
the second beach sun
and paper bag trick

remember the screening
the silver light show
banshee boots
and phipps’s throw

remember the epic
and baby oil block
trash can brassieres
and window rock

remember the law
jack rabbit in may
an 8 track mix
on alpine way

remember the dunes
a pig on the spit
the underarm hair
and corn bull-****

remember old frankie
and bursey head post
the koa leaves
and tiki shore host

remember b taupin
the lyrics he left
cold muddy waters
an odd treble clef

remember street regent
the trips in the night
the trailer park cap
and lightheart fight

remember kits causeway
mortimer and beaks
jk's cabin
and muscle bound freaks

remember glen cheesy
and billy the less
the frozen puke patties
and borkum mess

remember the catfish
and pickerel rock
the emerald meadows
and rainbow dock

remember port dover
with fish on a stick
wayne in a bunker
holding his ****

remember the ironside
limes in a tree
the usc campus
came with a fee

remember the duster
an arrow in heart
the frog man bug
that would not start

remember the zimmer
the ram air hood
a family wagon
with panels of wood

remember peace portal
the 33 back
the power built drive
and dangerous tack

remember the reds
the blues and the greens
the furry point island
and country book scene

remember the springs
and i 95
a lone state trooper
with blood in his eye

remember may’s cabin
and stuff in between
the frame and the picture
and morning snow scene

remember the boss
with a 302 scoop
the diamond tuft console
and back seat coupe

remember ioco
the **** and the spit
the skid road race
and hurst floor kit

remember the shore
and tents in the park
a campfire roast
and kerosene bark

remember the hooger’s
kit kat club
the colvin’s and setter’s
a man called bub

remember the creature
with silk strand hair
and afternoon flask
with little despair

remember quilchena
and robbie the mac
the rice stead box
and tap on the back

remember miss williams
a pilgrim’s salute
the fairmont sister
with all of her loot

remember port ludlow
a scotman on dock
the everett street bridge
and single leg sock

remember the masters
and all of the roar
the faldo follies
at norman’s door

remember jeff samson
tied in a tree
the robertson fastback
with white leather seats

remember the balance
and pulling of 4's
the moncton warehouse
and hollywood ******

remember the hospice
with carter in wear
the power of gospel
and magic in prayer

remember the mini
counting the crows
aberdeen villa
where all of it grows

remember the ballroom
the battle of bands
the buccaneer bikers
and front row stands

remember the steely
and 50 odd pulls
the crook in the cranny
and pilsner bulls

remember the mustang
tb paul
the ****** shack sergeant
was missing a ball

remember dear kevin
head first in the pool
a sheik in a minefield
and ****** gas fool

remember the rumble
and bats in the night
an old lady screaming
to a young man’s delight

remember cliff olsen
that sick little ****
who will be in shackles
on lucifer’s truck

remember the bumpers
and cutting in line
the mice on the ****
and bo in the pine

remember the law
stabbing the corn
a bucket of ammo
and mekong horn

remember s boras
the piercing of yes
the color line paper
sikosie at rest

remember the pinto
and seven road plants
mother’s fine pizza
a trial lawyer’s rant

remember the kennedys
with ***** painted black
a pond in the shadows
where monty looked back

remember von husen
the sea to sky test
a farm hands daughter
was one of the best

remember mr pither
and mao sae tung
helena the cougar
and egg foo young

remember the cinder
and frances road bake
***** the whitehead
would make no mistake

remember the quan
and mental mix
the java hut sister
with pixy sticks

remember j rosie
banging his head
in a moment of dr
we thought he was dead

remember the hammer
discussions caught short
siddrich and roger
and monty’s abort

remember 6 nations
and KOA
the pool hall fight
when everyone stayed

remember the skinners
and tommy the med
the lost tough china
and bubs in the shed

remember the doobies
zeppelin and cars
floyd and the *****
and shankar’s sitar

remember old dustys
the blue and red chair
the cypress hill caves
and mullet cut hair

remember the promise
and vows that we made
on the 2 road stairs
in goodman’s brigade

remember those moments
and handle with care
for the garamond stamp
will always be there…

I waited today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
     bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
     cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
     sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
     train without a ticket.
It reminded me of ten days I spent in the Allegheny
     County jail in Pittsburgh.
I got ten days even though I was a veteran of the
     Spanish-American war.
Cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a
     bricklayer and a *****-fighter.
But it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and
     he had fought to preserve the Union and free the
     *******.
We were three in all, the other being a Lithuanian who
     got drunk on pay day at the steel works and got to
     fighting a policeman;
All the clothes he had was a shirt, pants and shoes--
     somebody got his hat and coat and what money he
     had left over when he got drunk.

Rubber bracelets adorn her wrists like she just strolled out of a punk concert (like she just strolled out of middle school) , she picks the scabs of playground ostracism till they look as though they were ripped into her self esteem yesterday.

In her mind, they were.

I find her burying her face between her knees during an ice breaker activity.

The quadruple piercings on one her ear portend an imagined mosh pit, but she digs her own as she cradles herself against the wall.

Her arms are bowling alley bumpers, she throws them up around her head to protect them from the familiar miasma that pervades every inch of her whenever she is in a group of more than three.

Gutterball.

She let me in her room last night. She invited me to share in solitude w/ a good book. I brought a tattered poetry anthology. She said I could sit next to her in her bed; I took a seat at the head, she sat coiled in the far back corner against the wall, legs tucked in against her body.

She was an injured rabbit, her burrow of blankets and books only gave her so much shelter.

She eats alone at breakfast amongst the group.

She starves herself. Her blood fills her stomach as the ulcers feed her imploding hunger that half glasses of chocolate milk cannot

She was dared to eat five gummy bears, and I swear by my own scars that she was about to bawl, eyelids pulled back by the judgmental demons she sees every day in the mirror, they chastise her for the chocolate milk, but her desperate hunger wins this battle. Barely.

Her headphones are like sunglasses shielding her eyes from meeting gazes with another.

I’m sorry Sarah, no matter how hard you push your spine against the bricks you will not phase through them, you are stuck with us here for five weeks my dear, and it is only day one.

I’m sorry that all I know of you is that your name is Sarah and that your last name begins with an R, I think. I haven’t had the guts to look back at the group text message our counselors sent out to check your last name because that would be closer to stalking than I feel comfortable going.

I’m sorry that I notice how your wrists and ears contradict the smile you stitch across your face just before you hide it behind your hair, and that I notice the absolute terror in your eyes as you stare at the mass of your peers before you.

I’m sorry that noticing makes me believe that I know you at all.

I’m sorry for how they all gawk at how adorable you are when more than three people give you their attention. I can only imagine how flush your cheeks become.

But I would think that you stopped blushing years ago. The permanent outflow of blood from your aorta to your face coagulated long ago, leaving your face with a perpetual hue of dull purple. Your body doesn’t know what to do with all the excess embarrassment.

I think you compensate by blood letting.

The only bracelet you wear that suits you is of the Deathly Hallows. A tiny silver stencil on a blue piece of twine. It’s blue like the four A.M. sky.

I think it gives you strength.

Sarah, your arms are not an invisibility cloak. While your hair may hide your face and your bracelets your scars, the world will see you.

It’s ironic that the very things you use to protect yourself bear your self-loathing like a family crest.

Class time. She darts to the back corner desk like a painted swordtail to a coral shoal, she curses her opaque scarlet hue, she thinks it ugly but the reef can still see her beauty behind the jagged outcroppings of her fragmented self-esteem. It shines through and refracts off the water, viscous like teenage judgment, and we see the spectrum of her beauty.

She’s a cognitive science major. She looks for a road map through her own thoughts in the curriculum, turn left at her fear of eating in front of others, bear right at her boyfriend of four months. She tries to make herself two dimensional at the lunch table, arms strapped to her sides like a straight jacket.

She jokingly told me to stop whistling about dreamt dreams and the French Revolution, she said it would make her cry. So I stopped.

I’ve never read Les Miserables, but I’ve sung enough about dreamt dreams to know that Life can fill your lungs like a zeppelin and can resonate through your mouth like Notre Dame just before Sunday mass if you only let it.

Let Life build a cathedral inside of you Sarah. The bricks are yours for the taking, and we are all standing here beside you with mortar at the ready.

The tangerine stained race track
spread across our **** carpet, a turn
by the wooden bed frame, a loop
near the five piece drum set.
My brother’s fingertips gripped a Hot Wheel
by its rear end, its rubber wheels
greeting the track, propelling it forward,
launching it into another plastic vehicle,
and Crash.

I nursed the toy cars through emergencies,
playing doctor to replace cracked windshields
and torn plastic bumpers, victims
of one too many collisions. It alarmed me
how easily the 1976 Mustang could lose its wheel,
sending it spinning like a dreidel while my brother grinned
with splintered teeth, feeling nothing.
The car survived the impact, but people
don’t always walk away from accidents. They can’t be raised
on jack stands and tinkered with. The operation table,
home to drivers with fluttering heartbeats,
can hum to the deafening beat of a flat-line monitor.

the comma
a most prosaic-looking fellow
never gets into a coma
though he’s useful enough
to give you a pause or break;
the comma separates and lists
and where the word-traffic may be in danger of crashing
into one another, bumper to bumper
the comma comes in like road markers
and ensures smooth flow:
don’t kiss bumpers; kiss your commas

Morning

the alarm goes off
I wake up
I turn it off
I go back to sleep
My mom or dad comes in
they wake me back up
I lie in bed
for 10 more minutes
then I get up
I go to the bathroom
and stare at myself in the mirror
I sigh...
I pretend to wash my face
I go back to my room
I stare at my closet
and decide what I'm going to wear
I get dressed
I go down stairs
I eat one of the following items:
oat meal
   -Chocolate chip
   -Maple brown sugar
   -apple cinnamon
Whole wheat bagel with almond butter, peanut butter, cinnamon, and/or jam
cereal if there are any good options
   -Peanut butter bumpers
   -GOOD granola
   -organic chocolate *****
with coconut milk
toast with the same things as bagels
I say good morning to parents
I argue with my sister
I drink my orange juice
eat my vitamins
bring my stuff up to the sink
go up stairs
I lie on my bed
I go into the bathroom
I brush my teeth
I go downstairs
I pack my backpack
I pick out some shoes
I yawn
I go to school

School
I go to advisory
We play cake(a game)
First class
I space out
I draw pictures
unless that class is of the following:
PE
Writing lab (if it's not about grammer or spelling)
Art
Music(Because all the string instruments make it impossible)
I go to math
I get too confused to know what the hell is going on
I go to writing lab
we write and then teacher goes into some speech about commas
I go to french
I have no idea what the teachers talking about
I go to PE
If we aren't playing soccer, basketball, dodgeball, batmitten, capture the flag, or volleyball than I ****

Lunch
Yay!
I eat
I talk
I chill

More classes
Art
I tell my teacher how much I love her outfit
I read the board
and I make art

Music
UGHHHH
THE TEACHER IS SUCH A GRUMP!!!
I listen to her yell at people
I play my instrument

Study

Almost done with school
I finish a bit of homework

Going home (Or going nordic skiing)

I get a snack
I do homework
I have dinner with the family
I do more homework
I get ready for bed
I read
I go to bed

Every day is the same
the weekend is just a bunch of chores
hanging with friends some times
and stay up late watching my favorite shows:
Bones
Glee
CSI NY
CONAN
SNL

Ugh I need a change.

At age 45 I decided to become a sailor.  It had attracted me since I first saw a man living on his sailboat at the 77th street boat basin in New York City, back in 1978.  I was leaving on a charter boat trip with customers up the Hudson to West Point, and the image of him having coffee on the back deck of his boat that morning stayed with me for years.  It was now 1994, and I had just bought a condo on the back bay of a South Jersey beach town — and it came with a boat slip.

I started my search for a boat by first reading every sailing magazine I could get my hands on.  This was frustrating because most of the boats they featured were ‘way’ out of my price range. I knew I wanted a boat that was 25’ to 27’ in length and something with a full cabin below deck so that I could sail some overnight’s with my wife and two kids.

I then started to attend boat shows.  The used boats at the shows were more in my price range, and I traveled from Norfolk to Mystic Seaport in search of the right one.  One day, while checking the classifieds in a local Jersey Shore newspaper, I saw a boat advertised that I just had to go see …

  For Sale: 27’ Cal Sloop. Circa 1966. One owner and used very
   gently.  Price $6,500.00 (negotiable)

This boat was now almost 30 years old, but I had heard good things about the Cal’s.  Cal was short for California. It was a boat originally manufactured on the west coast and the company was now out of business.  The brand had a real ‘cult’ following, and the boat had a reputation for being extremely sea worthy with a fixed keel, and it was noted for being good in very light air.  This boat drew over 60’’ of water, which meant that I would need at least five feet of depth (and really seven) to avoid running aground.  The bay behind my condo was full of low spots, especially at low tide, and most sailors had boats with retractable centerboards rather than fixed keels.  This allowed them to retract the boards (up) during low tide and sail in less than three feet of water. This wouldn’t be an option for me if I bought the Cal.

I was most interested in ‘blue water’ ocean sailing, so the stability of the fixed keel was very attractive to me.  I decided to travel thirty miles North to the New Jersey beach town of Mystic Island to look at the boat.  I arrived in front of a white bi-level house on a sunny Monday April afternoon at about 4:30. The letters on the mailbox said Murphy, with the ‘r’ & the ‘p’ being worn almost completely away due to the heavy salt air.

I walked to the front door and rang the buzzer.  An attractive blonde woman about ten years older than me answered the door. She asked: “Are you the one that called about the boat?”  I said that I was, and she then said that her husband would be home from work in about twenty minutes.  He worked for Resorts International Casino in Atlantic City as their head of maintenance, and he knew everything there was to know about the Cal. docked out back.  

Her name was Betty and as she offered me ice tea she started to talk about the boat.  “It was my husband’s best friend’s boat. Irv and his wife Dee Dee live next door but Irv dropped dead of a heart attack last fall.  My husband and Irv used to take the boat out through the Beach Haven Inlet into the ocean almost every night.  Irv bought the boat new back in 1967, and we moved into this house in 1968.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun the two of them had on that old boat.  It’s sat idle, ******* to the bulkhead since last fall, and Dee Dee couldn’t even begin to deal with selling it until her kids convinced her to move to Florida and live with them.  She offered it to my husband Ed but he said the boat would never be the same without Irv on board, and he’d rather see it go to a new owner.  Looking at it every day behind the house just brought back memories of Irv and made him sad all over again every time that he did.”

Just then Ed walked through the door leading from the garage into the house.  “Is this the new sailor I’ve been hearing about,” he said in a big friendly voice.  “That’s me I said,” as we shook hands.  ‘Give me a minute to change and I’ll be right with you.”

As Ed walked me back through the stone yard to the canal behind his house, I noticed something peculiar.  There was no dock at the end of his property.  The boat was tied directly to the sea wall itself with only three yellow and black ‘bumpers’ separating the fiberglass side of the boat from the bulkhead itself.  It was low tide now and the boats keel was sitting in at least two feet of sand and mud.  Ed explained to me that Irv used to have this small channel that they lived on, which was man made, dredged out every year.  Irv also had a dock, but it had even less water underneath it than the bulkhead behind Ed’s house.

Ed said again, “no dredging’s been done this year, and the only way to get the boat out of the small back tributary to the main artery of the bay, is to wait for high tide. The tide will bring the water level up at least six feet.  That will give the boat twenty-four inches of clearance at the bottom and allow you to take it out into the deeper (30 feet) water of the main channel.”

Ed jumped on the boat and said, “C’mon, let me show you the inside.”  As he took the padlock off the slides leading to the companionway, I noticed how motley and ***** everything was. My image of sailing was pristine boats glimmering in the sun with their main sails up and the captain and crew with drinks in their hands.  This was about as far away from that as you could get.  As Ed removed the slides, the smell hit me.  MOLD! The smell of mildew was everywhere, and I could only stay below deck for a moment or two before I had to come back up topside for air.  Ed said, “It’ll all dry out (the air) in about ten minutes, and then we can go forward and look at the V-Berth and the head in the front of the cabin.”

What had I gotten myself into, I thought?  This boat looked beyond salvageable, and I was now looking for excuses to leave. Ed then said, “Look; I know it seems bad, but it’s all cosmetic.  It’s really a fine boat, and if you’re willing to clean it up, it will look almost perfect when you’re done. Before Irv died, it was one of the best looking sailboats on the island.”

In ten more minutes we went back inside.  The damp air had been replaced with fresh air from outside, and I could now get a better look at the galley and salon.  The entire cabin was finished in a reddish brown, varnished wood, with nice trim work along the edges.  It had two single sofas in the main salon that converted into beds at night, with a stainless-steel sink, refrigerator and nice carpeting and curtains.  We then went forward.  The head was about 40’’ by 40’’ and finished in the same wood as the outer cabin.  The toilet, sink, and hand-held shower looked fine, and Ed assured me that as soon as we filled up the water tank, they would all work.

The best part for me though was the v-berth beyond.  It was behind a sold wood varnished door with a beautiful brass grab-rail that helped it open and close. It was large, with a sleeping area that would easily accommodate two people. That, combined with the other two sleeping berths in the main salon, meant that my entire family could spend the night on the boat. I was starting to get really interested!

Ed then said that Irv’s wife Dee Dee was as interested in the boat going to a good home as she was in making any money off the boat.  We walked back up to the cockpit area and sat down across from each other on each side of the tiller.  Ed said, “what do you think?” I admitted to Ed that I didn’t know much about sailboats, and that this would be my first.  He told me it was Irv’s first boat too, and he loved it so much that he never looked at another.

                   Ed Was A Pretty Good Salesman

We then walked back inside the house.  Betty had prepared chicken salad sandwiches, and we all sat out on the back deck to eat.  From here you could see the boat clearly, and its thirty-five-foot mast was now silhouetted in front of the sun that was setting behind the marsh.  It was a very pretty scene indeed.

Ed said,”Dee Dee has left it up to me to sell the boat.  I’m willing to be reasonable if you say you really want it.”  I looked out at what was once a white sailboat, covered in mold and sitting in the mud.  No matter how hard the wind blew, and there was a strong offshore breeze, it was not moving an inch.  I then said to Ed, “would it be possible to come back when the tide is up and you can take me out?”  Ed said he would be glad to, and Saturday around 2:00 p.m. would be a good time to come back. The tide would be up then.  I also asked him if between now and Saturday I could try and clean the boat up a little? This would allow me to really see what I would be buying, and at the very least we’d have a cleaner boat to take out on the water.  Ed said fine.

I spent the next four days cleaning the boat. Armed with four gallons of bleach, rubber gloves, a mask, and more rags than I could count, I started to remove the mold.  It took all week to get the boat free of the mildew and back to being white again. The cushions inside the v-berth and salon were so infested with mold that I threw them up on the stones covering Ed’s back yard. I then asked Ed if he wanted to throw them out — he said that he did.

Saturday came, and Betty had said, “make sure to get here in time for lunch.”  At 11:45 a.m. I pulled up in front of the house.  By this time, we knew each other so well that Betty just yelled down through the screen door, “Let yourself in, Ed’s down by the boat fiddling with the motor.”  The only good thing that had been done since Irv passed away last fall was that Ed had removed the motor from the boat. It was a long shaft Johnson 9.9 horsepower outboard, and he had stored it in his garage.  The motor was over twelve years old, but Ed said that Irv had taken really good care of it and that it ran great.  It was also a long shaft, which meant that the propeller was deep in the water behind the keel and would give the boat more propulsion than a regular shaft outboard would.

I yelled ‘hello’ to Ed from the deck outside the kitchen.  He shouted back, “Get down here, I want you to hear this.”  I ran down the stairs and out the back door across the stones to where Ed was sitting on the boat.  He had the twist throttle in his hand, and he was revving the motor. Just like he had said —it sounded great. Being a lifelong motorcycle and sports car enthusiast, I knew what a strong motor sounded like, and this one sounded just great to me.

“Take the throttle, Ed said,” as I jumped on board.  I revved the motor half a dozen times and then almost fell over.  The boat had just moved about twenty degrees to the starboard (right) side in the strong wind and for the first time was floating freely in the canal.  Now I really felt like I was on a boat.  Ed said, “Are you hungry, or do you wanna go sailing?”  Hoping that it wouldn’t offend Betty I said, “Let’s head out now into the deeper water.” Ed said that Betty would be just fine, and that we could eat when we got back.

As I untied the bow and stern lines, I could tell right away that Ed knew what he was doing.  After traveling less than 100 yards to the main channel leading to the bay, he put the mainsail up and we sailed from that point on.  It was two miles out to the ocean, and he skillfully maneuvered the boat, using nothing but the tiller and mainsheet.  The mainsheet is the block and pulley that is attached from the deck of the cockpit to the boom.  It allows the boom to go out and come back, which controls the speed of the boat. The tiller then allows you to change direction.  With the mainsheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, the magic of sailing was hard to describe.

I was mesmerized watching Ed work the tiller and mainsheet in perfect harmony. The outboard was now tilted back up in the cockpit and out of the water.  “For many years before he bought the motor, Irv and I would take her out, and bring her back in with nothing but the sail, One summer we had very little wind, and Irv and I got stuck out in the ocean. Twice we had to be towed back in by ‘Sea Tow.’  After that Irv broke down and bought the long-shaft Johnson.”

In about thirty minutes we passed through the ‘Great Bay,’ then the Little Egg and Beach Haven Inlets, until we were finally in the ocean.  “Only about 3016 miles straight out there, due East, and you’ll be in London,” Ed said.”  Then it hit me.  From where we were now, I could sail anywhere in the world, with nothing to stop me except my lack of experience. Experience I told myself, was something that I would quickly get. Knowing the exact mileage, said to me that both Ed and Irv had thought about that trip, and maybe had fantasized about doing it together.

    With The Tenuousness Of Life, You Never Know How Much      Time You Have

For two more hours we sailed up and down the coast in front of Long Beach Island.  I could hardly sit down in the cockpit as Ed let me do most of the sailing.  It took only thirty minutes to get the hang of using the mainsheet and tiller, and after an hour I felt like I had been sailing all my life.  Then we both heard a voice come over the radio.  Ed’s wife Betty was on channel 27 of the VHF asking if we were OK and that lunch was still there but the sandwiches were getting soggy.  Ed said we were headed back because the tide had started to go out, and we needed to be back and ******* in less than ninety minutes or we would run aground in the canal.

I sailed us back through the inlets which thankfully were calm that day and back into the main channel leading out of the bay.  Ed then took it from there.  He skillfully brought us up the rest of the channel and into the canal, and in a fairly stiff wind spun the boat 180’ around and gently slid it back into position along the sea wall behind his house.  I had all 3 fenders out and quickly jumped off the boat and up on top of the bulkhead to tie off the stern line once we were safely alongside.  I then tied off the bow-line as Ed said, “Not too tight, you have to allow for the 6-8 feet of tide that we get here every day.”

After bringing down the mainsail, and folding and zippering it safely to the boom, we locked the companionway and headed for the house.  Betty was smoking a cigarette on the back deck and said, “So how did it go boys?” Without saying a word Ed looked directly at me and for one of the few times in my life, I didn’t really know where to begin.

“My God,” I said.  “My God.”  “I’ll take that as good Betty said, as she brought the sandwiches back out from the kitchen.  “You can powerboat your whole life, but sailing is different” Ed told me.  “When sailing, you have to work with the weather and not just try to power through it.  The weather tells you everything.  In these parts, when a storm kicks up you see two sure things happen.  The powerboats are all coming in, and the sailboat’s are all headed out.  What is dangerous and unpleasant for the one, is just what the other hopes for.”

I had been a surfer as a kid and understood the logic.  When the waves got so big on the beach that the lifeguard’s closed it to swimming during a storm, the surfers all headed out.  This would not be the only similarity I would find between surfing and sailing as my odyssey continued.  I finished my lunch quickly because all I wanted to do was get back on the boat.

When I returned to the bulkhead the keel had already touched bottom and the boat was again fixed and rigidly upright in the shallow water.  I spent the afternoon on the back of the boat, and even though I knew it was bad luck, in my mind I changed her name.  She would now be called the ‘Trinity,’ because of the three who would now sail her —my daughter Melissa, my son T.C. and I.  I also thought that any protection I might get from the almighty because of the name couldn’t hurt a new sailor with still so much to learn.

                                  Trinity, It Was!

I now knew I was going to buy the boat.  I went back inside and Ed was fooling around with some fishing tackle inside his garage.  “OK Ed, how much can I buy her for?” I said.  Ed looked at me squarely and said, “You tell me what you think is fair.”  “Five thousand I said,” and without even looking up Ed said “SOLD!” I wrote the check out to Irv’s wife on the spot, and in that instant it became real. I was now a boat owner, and a future deep-water sailor.  The Atlantic Ocean had better watch out, because the Captain and crew of the Trinity were headed her way.

                 SOLD, In An Instant, It Became Real!

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids the news.  They hadn’t seen much of me for the last week, and they both wanted to run right back and take the boat out.  I told them we could do it tomorrow (Sunday) and called Ed to ask him if he’d accompany us one more time on a trip out through the bay.  He said gladly, and to get to his house by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow to ‘play the tide.’  The kids could hardly sleep as they fired one question after another at me about the boat. More than anything, they wanted to know how we would get it the 45 miles from where it was docked to the boat slip behind our condo in Stone Harbor.  At dinner that night at our favorite Italian restaurant, they were already talking about the boat like it was theirs.

The next morning, they were both up at dawn, and by 8:30 we were on our way North to Mystic Island.  We had decided to stop at a marine supply store and buy a laundry list of things that mariners need ‘just in case’ aboard a boat.  At 11:15 a.m. we pulled out of the parking lot of Boaters World in Somers Point, New Jersey, and headed for Ed and Betty’s. They were both sitting in lawn chairs when we got there and surprised to see us so early.  ‘The tide’s not up for another 3 hours,” Ed said, as we walked up the drive.  I told him we knew that, but the kids wanted to spend a couple of hours on the boat before we headed out into the bay.  “Glad to have you kids,” Ed said, as he went back to reading his paper.  Betty told us that anything that we might need, other than what we just bought, is most likely in the garage.

Ed, being a professional maintenance engineer (what Betty called him), had a garage that any handyman would die for.  I’m sure we could have built an entire house on the empty lot across the street just from what Ed had hanging, and piled up, in his garage.

We walked around the side of the house and when the kids got their first look at the boat, they bolted for what they thought was a dock.  When they saw it was raw bulkhead, they looked back at me unsure of what to do.  I said, ‘jump aboard,” but be careful not to fall in, smiling to myself and knowing that the water was still less than four feet deep.  With that, my 8-year old son took a flying leap and landed dead center in the middle of the cockpit — a true sailor for sure.  My daughter then pulled the bow line tight bringing the boat closer to the sea wall and gingerly stepped on board like she had done it a thousand times before. Watching them board the boat for the first time, I knew this was the start of something really good.

Ed had already unlocked the companionway, so I stayed on dry land and just watched them for a half-hour as they explored every inch of the boat from bow to stern. “You really did a great job Dad cleaning her up.  Can we start the motor, my son asked?” I told him as soon as the tide came up another foot, we would drop the motor down into the water, and he could listen to it run.  So far this was everything I could have hoped for.  My kids loved the boat as much as I did.  I had had the local marine artist come by after I left the day before and paint the name ‘Trinity’ across the outside transom on the back of the boat. Now this boat was really ours. It’s hard to explain the thrill of finally owning your first boat. To those who can remember their first Christmas when they finally got what they had been hoping for all year —the feeling was the same.

                            It Was Finally Ours

In another hour, Ed came out. We fired up the motor with my son in charge, unzipped the mainsail, untied the lines, and we were headed back out to sea.  I’m not sure what was wider that day, the blue water vista straight in front of us or the eyes of my children as the boat bit into the wind. It was keeled over to port and carved through the choppy waters of ‘The Great Bay’ like it was finally home. For the first time in a long time the kids were speechless.  They let the wind do the talking, as the channel opened wide in front of them.

Ed let both kids take a turn at the helm. They were also amazed at how much their father had learned in the short time he had been sailing.  We stayed out for a full three hours, and then Betty again called on the VHF. “Coast Guards calling for a squall, with small craft warnings from five o’clock on.  For safety’s sake, you guy’s better head back for the dock.”  Ed and I smiled at each other, each knowing what the other was secretly thinking.  If the kids hadn’t been on board, this would have been a really fun time to ride out the storm.  Discretion though, won out over valor, and we headed West back through the bay and into the canal. Once again, Ed spun the boat around and nudged it into the sea wall like the master that he was.  This time my son was in charge of grabbing and tying off the lines, and he did it in a fashion that would make any father proud.

As we tidied up the boat, Ed said, “So when are you gonna take her South?”  “Next weekend, I said.” My business partner, who lives on his 42’ Egg Harbor in Cape May all summer and his oldest son are going to help us.  His oldest son Tony had worked on an 82’ sightseeing sailboat in Fort Lauderdale for two years, and his dad said there was little about sailing that he didn’t know.  That following Saturday couldn’t come fast enough/

                          We Counted The Minutes

The week blew by (literally), as the weather deteriorated with each day.  Saturday morning came, and the only good news (to me) was that my daughter had a gymnastic’s meet and couldn’t make the maiden voyage. The crew would be all men —my partner Tommy, his son Tony, and my son T.C. and I. We checked the tides, and it was decided that 9:30 a.m. was the perfect time to start South with the Trinity.  We left for Ed and Betty’s at 7:00 a.m. and after stopping at ‘Polly’s’ in Stone Harbor for breakfast we arrived at the boat at exactly 8:45.  It was already floating freely in the narrow canal. Not having Ed’s skill level, we decided to ‘motor’ off the bulkhead, and not put the sails up until we reached the main bay.  With a kiss to Betty and a hug from Ed, we broke a bottle of ‘Castellane Brut’ on the bulkhead and headed out of the canal.

Once in the main bay we noticed something we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t see at all!  The buoy markers were scarcely visibly that lined both sides of the channel. We decided to go South ‘inside,’ through the Intercoastal Waterway instead of sailing outside (ocean) to Townsends Inlet where we initially decided to come in.  This meant that we would have to request at least 15 bridge openings on our way south.  This was a tricky enough procedure in a powerboat, but in a sailboat it could be a disaster in the making.  The Intercoastal Waterway was the back-bay route from Maine to Florida and offered protection that the open ocean would not guarantee. It had the mainland to its West and the barrier island you were passing to its East.  If it weren’t for the number of causeway bridges along its route, it would have been the perfect sail.

When you signaled to the bridge tender with your air horn, requesting an opening, it could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes for him to get traffic stopped on the bridge before he could then open it up and let you through.  On Saturdays, it was worse. In three cases we waited and circled for twenty minutes before being given clear passage through the bridge.  Sailboats have the right of way over powerboats but only when they’re under sail. We had decided to take the sails down to make the boat easier to control.  By using the outboard we were just like any other powerboat waiting to get through, and often had to bob and weave around the waiting ‘stinkpots’ (powerboats) until the passage under the bridge was clear.  The mast on the Trinity was higher than even the tallest bridge, so we had to stop and signal to each one requesting an opening as we traveled slowly South.

All went reasonably well until we arrived at the main bridge entering Atlantic City. The rebuilt casino skyline hovered above the bridge like a looming monster in the fog.  This was also the bridge with the most traffic coming into town with weekend gamblers risking their mortgage money to try and break the bank.  The wind had now increased to over 30 knots.  This made staying in the same place in the water impossible. We desperately criss-crossed from side to side in the canal trying to stay in position for when the bridge opened. Larger boats blew their horns at us, as we drifted back and forth in the channel looking like a crew of drunks on New Year’s Eve.  Powerboats are able to maintain their position because they have large motors with a strong reverse gear.  Our little 9.9 Johnson did have reverse, but it didn’t have nearly enough power to back us up against the tide.

On our third pass zig-zagging across the channel and waiting for the bridge to open, it happened.  Instead of hearing the bell from the bridge tender signaling ‘all clear,’ we heard a loud “SNAP.’ Tony was at the helm, and from the front of the boat where I was standing lookout I heard him shout “OH S#!T.”  The wooden tiller had just broken off in his hand.

                                         SNAP!

Tony was sitting down at the helm with over three feet of broken tiller in his left hand.  The part that still remained and was connected to the rudder was less than 12 inches long.  Tony tried with all of his might to steer the boat with the little of the tiller that was still left, but it was impossible in the strong wind.  He then tried to steer the boat by turning the outboard both left and right and gunning the motor.  This only made a small correction, and we were now headed back across the Intercoastal Waterway with the wind behind us at over thirty knots.  We were also on a collision course with the bridge.  The only question was where we would hit it, not when! We hoped and prayed it would be as far to the Eastern (Atlantic City) side as possible.  This would be away from the long line of boats that were patiently lined up and waiting for the bridge to open.

Everything on the boat now took on a different air.  Tony was screaming that he couldn’t steer, and my son came up from down below where he was staying out of the rain. With one look he knew we were in deep trouble.  It was then that my priorities completely shifted from the safety of my new (old) boat to the safety of my son and the rest of those onboard.  My partner Tommy got on the radio’s public channel and warned everyone in the area that we were out of control.  Several power boaters tried to throw us a line, but in the strong wind they couldn’t get close enough to do it safely.

We were now less than 100 feet from the bridge.  It looked like we would hit about seven pylons left of dead center in the middle of the bridge on the North side.  As we braced for impact, a small 16 ft Sea Ray with an elderly couple came close and tried to take my son off the boat.  Unfortunately, they got too close and the swirling current around the bridge piers ****** them in, and they also hit the bridge about thirty feet to our left. Thank God, they did have enough power to ‘motor’ off the twenty-foot high pier they had hit but not without doing cosmetic damage to the starboard side of their beautiful little boat. I felt terrible about this and yelled ‘THANK YOU’ across the wind and the rushing water.  They waved back, as they headed North against the tide, back up the canal.

      The Kindness Of Strangers Continues To Amaze Me!

BANG !!!  That’s the sound the boat made when it hit the bridge.  We were now sideways in the current, and the first thing to hit was not the mast but the starboard side ‘stay’ that holds the mast up.  Stays are made of very thick wire, and even though the impact was at over ten knots, the stay held secure and did not break.  We were now pinned against the North side of the bridge, with the current swirling by us, and the boat being pulled slowly through the opening between the piers.  The current was pulling the boat and forcing it to lean over with the mast pointing North. If it continued to do this, we would finally broach (turn over) and all be in the water and floating South toward the beach towns of Margate and Ventnor.  The width between the piers was over thirty feet, so there was plenty of room to **** us in and then down, as the water had now assumed command.

It was at this moment that I tied my Son to myself.  He was a good swimmer and had been on our local swim team for the past three summers, but this was no pool.  There were stories every summer of boaters who got into trouble and had to go in the water, and many times someone drowned or was never found or seen again.  The mast was now leaned over and rubbing against the inside of the bridge.  

The noise it made moving back and forth was louder than even the strong wind.  Over the noise from the mast I heard Tommy shout, “Kurt, the stay is cutting through the insulation on the main wire that is the power source to the bridge. If it gets all the way through to the inside, the whole boat will be electrified, and we’ll go up like a roman candle.”  I reluctantly looked up and he was right.  The stay looked like it was more than half-way through the heavy rubber insulation that was wrapped around the enormous cable that ran horizontally inside and under the entire span of the bridge.  I told Tommy to get on the VHF and alert the Coast Guard to what was happening.  I also considered jumping overboard with my son in my arms and tied to me hoping that someone would then pull us out of the water if we made it through the piers. I couldn’t leave though, because my partner couldn’t swim.

Even though Tommy had been a life-long boater, he had never learned to swim.  He grew up not far from the banks of the Mississippi River in Hardin Illinois and still hadn’t learned.  I couldn’t just leave him on the boat. We continued to stay trapped in between the piers as the metal wire stay worked its way back and forth across the insulated casing above.

In another fifteen minutes, two Coast Guard crews showed up in gigantic rubber boats.  Both had command towers up high and a crew of at least 8 on board.  They tried to get close enough to throw us a line but each time failed and had to motor away against the tide at full throttle to miss the bridge.  The wake from their huge twin outboards forced us even further under the bridge, and the port side rail of the Trinity was now less than a foot above the water line.

              Why Had I Changed The Name Of This Boat?

The I heard it again, BAMMM !  I looked up and saw nothing.  It all looked like it had before.  The Coast Guard boat closest to us came across on the bullhorn. “Don’t touch anything metal, you’ve cut through the insulation and are now in contact with the power source.  The boat is electrified, but if you stay still, the fiberglass and water will act as a buffer and insulation.  We can’t even touch or get near you now until the power gets turned off to the bridge.”  

We all stood in the middle of the cockpit as far away from anything metal as possible.  I reached into the left storage locker where the two plastic gas containers were and tightened the filler caps. I then threw both of them overboard.  They both floated harmlessly through the bridge where a third Coast Guard boat now retrieved them about 100 yards further down the bay.  At least now I wouldn’t have to worry about the two fifteen-gallon gas cans exploding if the electrical current ever got that far.

For a long twenty minutes we sat there huddled together as the Coast Guard kept yelling at us not to touch anything at all.  Just as I thought the boat was going under, everything seemed to go dark.  Even though it was early afternoon, the fog was so heavy that the lights on the bridge had been turned on.  Now in an instant, they were off.

                               All Lights Were Off

I saw the first Coast Guard boat turn around and then try to slowly drift our way backward. They were going to try and get us out from between the piers before we sank.  Three times they tried and three times again they failed.  Finally, two men in a large cigarette boat came flying at us. With those huge motors keeping them off the bridge, they took everyone off the Trinity, while giving me two lines to tie to both the bow and the stern. They then pulled up alongside the first large inflatable and handed the two lines to the Coast Guard crew.  After that, they backed off into the center of the channel to see what the Coast Guard would do next.

The second Coast Guard boat was now positioned beside the first with its back also facing the bridge.  They each had one of the lines tied to my boat now secured to cleats on their rear decks.  Slowly they motored forward as the Trinity emerged from its tomb inside the piers.  In less than fifteen seconds, the thirty-year boat old was free of the bridge.  With that, the Coast Guard boat holding the stern line let go and the sailboat turned around with the bow now facing the back of the first inflatable. The Captain continued to tow her until she was alongside the ‘Sea Tow’ service vessel that I hadn’t noticed until now.  The Captain on the Sea Tow rig said that he would tow the boat into Somers Point Marina.  That was the closest place he knew of that could make any sailboat repairs.

We thanked the owners of the cigarette boat and found out that they were both ex-navy seals.  ‘If they don’t die hard, some never die at all,’ and thank God for our nation’s true warriors. They dropped us off on Coast Guard Boat #1, and after spending about 10 minutes with the crew, the Captain asked me to come up on the bridge.  He had a mound of papers for me to fill out and then asked me if everyone was OK. “A little shook up,’” I said, “but we’re all basically alright.” I then asked this ‘weekend warrior’ if he had ever seen the movie ‘Top Gun.’  With his chest pushed out proudly he said that he had, and that it was one of his all-time favorites.

            ‘If They Don’t Die hard, Some Never Die At All’

I reminded him of the scene when the Coast Guard rescue team dropped into the rough waters of the Pacific to retrieve ‘Goose,’ who had just hit the canopy of his jet as he was trying to eject.  With his chest still pumped out, he said again proudly that he did. “Well, I guess that only happens in the movies, right Captain,” I said, as he turned back to his paperwork and looked away.

His crew had already told me down below that they wanted to approach the bridge broadside and take us off an hour ago but that the Captain had said no, it was too dangerous!  They also said that after his tour was over in 3 more months, no one would ever sail with him again.  He was the only one on-board without any real active-duty service, and he always shied away from doing the right thing when the weather was rough.  He had refused to go just three more miles last winter to rescue two fishermen off a sinking trawler forty miles offshore.  Both men died because he had said that the weather was just “too rough.”

                     ‘A True Weekend Only Warrior’

We all sat with the crew down below as they entertained my son and gave us hot coffee and offered medical help if needed.  Thankfully, we were all fine, but the coffee never tasted so good.  As we pulled into the marina in Somers Point, the Trinity was already there and tied to the service dock.  After all she had been through, she didn’t look any the worse for wear.  It was just then that I realized that I still hadn’t called my wife.  I could have called from the Coast Guard boat, but in the commotion of the moment, I had totally forgotten.

When I got through to her on the Marina’s pay phone, she said,  “Oh Dear God, we’ve been watching you on the news. Do you know you had the power turned off to all of Atlantic City for over an hour?”  After hanging up, I thought to myself —"I wonder what our little excursion must have cost the casino’s,” but then I thought that they probably had back up generation for something just like this, but then again —maybe not.

I asked my wife to come pick us up and noticed that my son was already down at the service dock and sitting on the back of his ‘new’ sailboat.  He said, “Dad, do you think she’ll be alright?” and I said to him, “Son, she’ll be even better than that. If she could go through what happened today and remain above water, she can go through anything — and so can you.  I’m really proud of the way you handled yourself today.”

My Son is now almost thirty years old, and we talk about that day often. The memory of hitting the bridge and surviving is something we will forever share.  As a family, we continued to sail the Trinity for many years until our interests moved to Wyoming.  We then placed the Trinity in the capable hands of our neighbor Bobby, next door, who sails her to this day.

All through those years though, and especially during the Stone Harbor Regatta over the Fourth of July weekend, there was no mistaking our crew when you saw us coming through your back basin in the ‘Parade of Ships.’  Everyone aboard was dressed in a red polo shirt, and if you happened to look at any of us from behind, you would have seen …

                               ‘The Crew Of The Trinity’  
                         FULL CONTACT SAILING ONLY!

it was over. finished and requiring further complicity for another onslaught of banal narrative to be revealed before my to half opened windows when i sought a habit that, as a friend warns me, is most deadly.
12:15 AM
me
**** it im out. but wait everyone is asleep. so take a flashlight with you dummy. no. the click makes too much noise. a lighter? NO! even worse. grab a phone in the remote chance that while im alone, aside the ever-greening pool, she might call.
12:17 AM
me
that stupid ******* glow-in-the-dark rosary! it ruins me every time and so does the 14th 16th, and 9th step from the bottom with their relentless creak. i should have learned by now their pattern but, then again, i only need it when nefarious action is in play. shame on me. my phone served as an appropriate guide (as long as it shone away from my parents door, of course). tip-toeing over the debris that still remains from a "successful" marriage i arrived at the back door.
it has a trick though.
12:21 AM
me
it depends on which way you are going, but to eek out of it properly you have to pull in and then turn the handle. NO SCRATCH THAT REVERSE IT and vice versa. the out of doors is only slightly more liberating than being cloistered in a room bound by roddenberry. on this night, however, the night provided what might be considered, by people in towns whose greatest income centers around cattle feeding and slaughter, as breezy and cool.
12:24 AM
me
where ARE those cigarettes?? **** it. a **** will do. clip clop around the green until you realize you know where ever piece of debris is. you are stepping over the things that you cannot see. surreal. ****. look up to ascertain your spatial coordinates.
earth.
figures.
12:26 AM
me
**** it. again. some more. if you keep looking up looking at the flaming ***** of helium trillions of light years away and someone comes out they will probably think that you are just contemplating your own existence as opposed to the other...thing. something that really has no name. the place between dream and reality. this place, though, has a certain specificity. a clarity. so i consider what i am privy to.
12:30 AM
me
small dots above me. white dots in a globular dispersion above me. what im told is that they are steadily--NO--rapidly retreating from me. i am told that all of these dots have more dots, that i cant see, that move around them. on /those/ dots sentient things might exist. might. what i know for myself is that I DO. as well as i am able to ascertain, other people like myself exist too. and, if they are anything like me they must experience something similar to my experiences.
12:33 AM
me
well ****. these dots. these ******* white dots, as they flee with their potential other lives, make realize [yet again mind you[ that i have things that might be unique to me and only a handful of other things like me on this sphere.
12:35 AM
me
if i were to ignore those statistically remote similarities here, near me, i would be as foolish as the pin ball that thinks it belongs among the bumpers. i belong in a hole.at least one that fits my shape.
i am no pinball.
but i live amongst those things that tell me what i know. what i have known. what continues to reveal to me the nature of nature.
12:38 AM
me
startled i ***** my cigarette on the bench my father and i once made for an easter get-together with my family and withdraw my phone again to return to roddenberrys lair. over the pile of old coats near the back door. beyond the 52" plasma still playing a re-run of diners, drive-ins and whatever the **** and, shining the light away from my parents door i climbed the stairs. making sure to hit 9, 14, and 16 on the way up, cursing myself at the top."you mind if i pseudo-rant for a bit while," i smashed on the remote keys.

Mother tried to be a decent mother
in the weeks ahead of Christmas.
she’d fill the month with Advent calendars,
finger countdowns and splotchy
un-successful attempts to create a
joyful face with lipstick.

In hindsight maybe the weight
of her guilt was especially heavy during
the one month of the year that God
could not be ignored.

Its different now.
God is no longer privy to X-mas,
and guilt is not an appropriate emotion
to be taught to children.  

I was more afraid
of mother during Christmas
than at any other time of the year,
all that fake smiling and brittle kindness,
her strings could snap at any moment,
and you knew they would
you just didn’t know when,
or how, or on who.

“It always snows at Christmas!”
mother said as she reached
out my bedroom window to
gather a handful of fresh powder.
She’d bring it in to show me
and I’d wince and cringe because
her movements were  erratic
and unpredictable
like a puppet on strings, her
arms swinging wildly
from side to side,
knees jerking up and down
across the floor
she’d always end up
spilling snow on my bed.

I think the snow helped numb
what it was that she hid,
helped her hide behind
that painted wooden smile,
if only for a little while.

My memories of snow
are quite vivid.
  
I’d shovel snow into
tall piles, taller than I stood
then build tunnels
to the other side.
I jumped off of rooftops
into huge snowdrifts
and come up with
sleeves full of snow.
My friends and I would
latch onto bumpers of
slow moving cars
and “skeech” through
the neighborhood,
or careen down toboggan
runs on our feet,
face planting
at the bottom where
the ice gave way
to fresh snow.

When I turned 16
we’d hide Old Style Beer
in snow drifts,
build ice forts in the forest
and spin donuts in
St. Mary’s parking lot with
open beers in our laps
and never get caught.

As I see it now
all of these things
helped ease the
burden of confusion
with my mother’s
dis- interested
wooden puppet
smiling,

but her guilt ridden
attempts at
Christmas niceties
were never going
to be enough
to keep me from
becoming
dysfunctional.

You see its all about the snow.  
A life embraced by snow.

snow cut into lines,
Encapsulated snow,
spoon melted snow,

any kind of snow
to numb the extremities
and freeze the nerve endings,

a temporary escape from
the Christmas gift
of mother’s guilt.

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of
     each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a *** on the bumpers a thousand miles away
     dead broke.
          I wish the kids had never come
          And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
          And a grocery man calling for cash,
          Every day cash for beans and prunes.
          I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
          I wish to God the kids had never come.

12:15 AM
it was over.
finished
and requiring no further complicity for another onslaught
of banal narrative to be revealed just before my the half opened
windows creaked.
i sought the most deadly habit,
against which she had warned.

12:17 AM
**** it im out. but wait everyone is asleep. so take a flashlight with you dummy.
no.
the click makes too much noise.
a lighter? NO!
even worse.
grab a phone in the remote chance
that,
while im alone,
aside the ever-greening pool,
she might call.

12:21 AM
that stupid ******* glow-in-the-dark rosary!
it ruins me every time and so does
the 14th 16th, and 9th step from the bottom
with their relentless creak.
i should have learned by now
their pattern
but, then again,
i only need it when nefarious action is in play.
shame on me.
my phone served as an appropriate guide
(as long as it shone away from my parents door, of course)
tip-toeing over the debris that still remains
from a "successful" marriage
i arrived at the back door.
it has a trick though.

12:24 AM
it depends on which way you are going
but to eek out of it properly
you have to pull in and THEN turn the handle.
NO SCRATCH THAT REVERSE IT and vice versa.
the out of doors is only slightly more liberating
than being cloistered in a room
bound by roddenberry.
on this night
however
the night provided
what might be considered
by people in towns whose income
centers around cattle feeding and slaughter
breezy and cool environs.

12:26 AM
where ARE those cigarettes??
**** it.
a **** will do.
traipse around the green until you realize
you know where every piece of debris is
you are stepping over the things that you cant see.
surreal.
****. look up to ascertain your spatial coordinate
figures.

12:30 AM
**** it.
again.
some more.
keep looking up looking at the flaming ***** of helium
trillions of light years away
and someone comes out
they will probably think that
you are just contemplating
your own existence
as opposed to the other...thing
something that really has no name.
the place between dream and reality
this place, though, has a certain specificity
no clarity
i consider then what i am privy to

12:33 AM
small dots above me.
in a globular dispersion beyond
what im told is that they are steadily
NO
rapidly retreating
i am told
all of these dots have more dots
that i cant see
that move around them
and
on those dots sentient things might exist
might
i know that I DO
as well as i am able to ascertain

12:35 AM
well ****.
these dots
these ******* white dots
as they flee with their potential
i realize [yet again mind you]
that i have things that might be unique
to me
and
only a handful of other things

12:38 AM
if i were to ignore those statistically remote similarities
here
near me
i would be as foolish
as the pinball that believes
it belongs among the bumpers
i belong in a hole
at least one that fits my shape.
i am no pinball.
but
i live amongst those things
that tell me what i know
what i have known
what continues to reveal
to me the nature of nature.

12:48 AM
startled i ***** my cigarette on the bench
the bench my father and i once made
for an family easter get-together
withdraw with my phone
again towards roddenberrys lair
past the pile of old coats near the back door
beyond the 52" plasma
still playing a re-run of diners, drive-ins and whatever the ****
shining the light away from my parents door
i climbed the stairs.
making sure to hit 9, 14, and 16 on the way up
cursing myself at the top
"you mind if i pseudo-rant for a bit while?"
i smashed on the remote keys.

383 small block, double-**** heads,
fuel injection, supercharger
a midnight cruise
flaming hot licks on black lacquer paint
street lights blowing past
That’s chrome, baby.

That’s chrome.

Road signs, blue eyes, blonde hair,
cherry red lips framed in a billet mirror
long legs hang under
a plaid mini-skirt straddling
a 4-speed.

That’s chrome, baby.
That’s chrome.

Exhaust fumes, tire smoke,
high octane fuel, perfume
waters both mouth and eyes
Detroit steel never smelled this good
Red fingernails dig denim at 5500 rpm.

That’s chrome, baby.
That’s chrome.

Chrome bumpers, chrome grills,
chrome smiles, chrome thrills.
That’s chrome, baby.
That’s chrome.


© 2010 C.T. Bailey

ooooh,
look at the head lights.
And then glance at the wheels.
See, how the body shines?
Don't the wax appears tight.

Feel the leathers.
Smooth and soft to the touch.
Check out the dash board.
The interior is appealing.

And the bumpers impressive.
I listen closely to the engine.
The motor sounds great.
And you thought I was talking about a car.
When in truth I'm speaking of a girl.

Yes, it might sound sexist.
But then a woman might think of a man like a truck.
And, I wonder what they compare them too.
A GMC.
A Chevy or Ford pickup truck.
Sure, I wants to drive.
Just the same as them.
Yes, I be happy just riding along.
If she don't wants to come along.
We better look out.
When they starts to speak about him.

My car broke down

Across from the mechanic's shop,
I'm bowling a perfect
zero
with the bumpers up

My shoes get stolen

Barefoot in the tire lounge,
I chip my tooth on a gumball

the dentist pulled
the wrong teeth
he said it was my fault
so I apologize

I'm late for work

My boss is yelling
about something

I zone out

I don't explain myself

I get fired

I pack my box with nothing
but static air
filled with three-and-a-half
years

No one says goodbye
No one seems to notice

Except you

You call my name

You hug me
for the first time
ever

You even asked me
to call sometime

There's nothing else
I can do
but smile

and be smitten
from your laughing
at my new gold teeth

"It's been a few hours," you said,
"I feel fine."
But the crash didn't take your life,
It took mine.
Well mine and some others,
A family of four.
As the bumpers collided,
The windshield became my door.
While I take my last breaths,
On this pavement death bed,
I watch you get out of the car,
Walking, crying, shaking your head.
Four bubbling drinks,
Took five important lives.
I can only hope the next time you take a sip,
Those bubbles stab at your memory like knives.

a blushing van rolls to a stop.
he steps out onto the school parking lot
walks around the embarrassed bumpers
            clad in duct tape and inaccurate repaintings
brazenly
so sure he has it all.
she slides off the hood of a manicured foreign tank
hulking and onyx.

they embrace
too long
something is up
he is wary.
arms at her sides
she reaches for his lips
he does not look down
            he is wary
she leads him to the grass
his suspicion turns the green from vibrant
to synthetic
            he is wary.
they sit
across from each other
no table to negotiate over.
she is sure of the future
unsure of the way through the present
searching for words.
he prods
she speaks
she reaches for his hands
he tries to sit back on them
she catches his fingertips
            he knows.
sitting
she leaves him.
sitting
he calmly waves goodbye
and heads in another direction.
still on the grass
he
so it goes, eh?
she
hah, vonnegut.

days
weeks
months
years
jubilantly lilt by.
he is becoming a whole
looking to pair up
instead of a half
scrabbling for completion.
she takes trips
draining coffers on other continents.
in between vacations
another party
another one-word encounter
become but tallies
on a scoreboard no one reads
until
she finds him squeezed onto a full couch
tripping.
she slurs
pre-*****
hurt and frustration.
he looks at her
            he is weary.
            he was free.
            in this moment
            he is trapped
            on loop.
she stuck a fork in him
chest bleeding
it was not enough.
she honed his lust
against his pride
until
the fork
hummed a tune
only for her.
the vibrations cease
            he stops singing.
            he is hoarse.
it is over
this is overdue
he
finished with belting out
softly speaks.
she
            you just don’t say that
he
            why not?

***!!! If I had the power to magically hug people through the internet...


Patience.
It's coming.

And when it does,
No one will never sleep alone,
Weep inconsolably for lack of shoulder and hand
For I travel with a lean-on-tent
Travel with shelter for you,
Will you have it, have me, by command?

I used to write flowery poems, with fancy words
About flowers and such stuff,
But I gave it up,
No more, I will be now no longer
Poet electron florid,
But the real, not ethereal, delivery man.

Giving you loving kisses, tenderness, and
Mayflowers in December,
And kindness every day of my life and
Even after,
Cause heavens come on line
And even if I am stranger now,
I'll prove useful to have around,
Giving you poetry precisely couture designed by command,
So I fully expect to be hugging you happy
Soon enough.
You'll see.

Ok, maybe not Ogden quality,
This oeuvre, but I can do it over,
Can he?

Does, will he, read customized poems
With shiny bumpers, trim and spoked wheels,
Purposed only to please
You specifically,
In your soon-to-be-smiling flesh!

Like I will,
Soon enough.
You'll see.

Oh yeah. To summon me,
Just clap your hands three times,
Say out loud poet-in-the-hat,
And press Send.

I like to rub her righteous
Rubber baby buggy bumpers
While her Sister Susie
Sells seashells by the sea shore.
Susie works in a shoeshine shop,
She sits, and she shines all day long.
She confesses with too many esses
It lispers up her whispered song.

Peter Piper picking peppers
Putting pickled peppers in a ***.
Woodchuck chucked wood,
Chuckling, chucked the wood he got.
Susie’s sister Betty Botter
Bought a pound of bitter butter.
Betty was a bit of a ******.
She said her butter was better bitter.

I thought of a thought, thinking
It was a very difficult thing to occur.
Thinking, busily thinking;
Blinking, and winking, thinking of her
We made a date at a quarter to eight
Said, “I’ll see you at the gate, don’t be late.”
Lucky and plucky, my ducky doo,
It was a heavy date, and a heavy gate.

Leary of a really weary *****
We wandered in our wandering leathers
Wondered if whether wetter
Weather were better to weather together.
We celebrate our late date
We didn’t skate, or deliberate our fate
Suffice is to further elucidate
And cheerily chewed the churros we ate.

I was takin' a trip out to LA
Toolin' along in my Chevrolet
Tokin' on a number and diggin' on the radio
Jes' as I cross the Mississippi line
I heard that highway start to whine
And I knew that left rear tire was about to go
Well the spare was flat and I got uptight
'Cause there wasn't a fillin' station in sight
So I jes' limped down the shoulder on the rim
I went as far as I could and when I stopped the car
It was right in front of this little bar
A kind of a redneck lookin' joint called the Dew Drop Inn
Well I stuffed my hair up under my hat
And told the bartender that I had a flat
And would he be kind enough to give me change for a one
There was one thing I was sure proud to see
There wasn't a soul in the place 'cept for him an' me
And he just looked disgusted an' pointed toward the telephone
I called up the station down the road a ways
And he said he wasn't very busy t'day
And he could have somebody there in jest 'bout ten minutes or so
He said now you jes' stay right where yer at and I didn't bother
Tellin' the durn fool
I sure as hell didn't have anyplace else to go
I just ordered up a beer and sat down at the bar
When some guy walked in an' said who owns this car
With the peace sign the mag wheels and four on the floor
Well he looked at me and I **** near died
And I decided that I'd jus wait outside
So I layed a dollar on the bar and headed for the door
Jes' when I thought I'd get outta there with my skin
These five big dude come strollin' in
With this one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth
An' I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said you tip your hat to this lady son
An' when I did all that hair fell out from underneath
Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson Mississippi on a Saturday night
'Specially when there was three of them and only one of me
Well they all started laughin' and I felt kinda sick
And I knew I'd better think of somethin' pretty quick
So I jes' reached out an' kicked ol' green-teeth right in the knee
He let out a yell that'd curl your hair
But before he could move I grabbed me a chair
And said watch him folks 'cause he's a thouroughly dangerous man
Well you may not know it but this man's a spy
He's an undercover agent for the FBI
And he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux ****
He was still bent over holdin' on to his knee
But everyone else was lookin' and listenin' to me
And I layed it on thicker and heavier as I went
I said would you beleive this man has gone as far
As tearin' Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars
And he voted for George McGoveren for president
Well he's a friend of them long-haired hippie type ***** ****
I betcha he's even got a ****** flag
Tacked up on the wall inside of his garage
He's a snake in the grass I tell ya guys
He may look dumb but that's jus a disguise
He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage
They all started lookin' real suspicious at him
And he jumped up an' said jes' wait a minute Jim
You know he's lyin' I've been livin' here all of my life
I'm a faithfull follower of Brother John Burch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church
And I ain't even got a garage you can call home and ask my wife
Then he started sayin' somethin' 'bout the way I was dressed
But I didn't wait around to hear the rest
I was too busy movin' and hopin' I didn't run outta luck
And when I hit the ground I was makin' tracks
And they were jes' takin' my car down off the jacks
So I threw the man a twenty an' jumped in an' fired that mother up
Mario Andretti woulda sure been proud
Of the way I was movin' when I passed that crowd
Comin' out the door and headin' toward me in a trot
An' I guess I shoulda gone ahead an' run
But somehow I couldn't resist the fun
Of chasin' them jes' once around the parkin' lot
Well they're headin' for their car but I hit the gas
And spun around and headed them off at the pass
Well I was slingin' gravel and puttin' a ton of dust in the air
Well I had them all out there steppin' an' a fetchin'
Like their heads were on fire and their ***** was catchin'
But I figured I oughta go ahead an split before the cops got there
When I hit the road I was really wheelin'
Had gravel flyin' and rubber squeelin'
An' I didn't slow down 'til I was almost to Arkansas
I think I'm gonna re-route my trip
I wonder if anybody'd think I'd flipped
If I went to LA via Omaha!

My phone was down
To one percent tonight
And I’m not going to lie

I was scared.

I thought it was a sign

A sign that I might be
Running thin…..
Overexerting…..

Over indulging.

Work and liquor have been walking hand in hand down the street
Likes its 1950.


And I don’t like a lot of
People these days
Whether or not that’s because
I am reading lots of Bukowski ,
Is yet to be determined.

I think I can blame Bukowski
On the work/ liquor combo.
Maybe it’s time for a new job.

The day I quit working in an insulation factory
Was the day I finished reading “Post Office”
On my lunch break.
It was poetic.

Yet this Art Gallery
gig could be a good
Summertime tool
I am reading “Women” afterall.
And I do get to work easier hungover
Then when sober, and sleeping in.

I took a deep hard look at myself
The characters that surround
Me the places that I
Live and love and the things I like and love to do

It’s the honest truth
That I am confused

And young
And yet to evolve
And full of love

I ride in the back of trucks, on
hockey stick spoilers and broken bumpers

With long hair you can say the words like
“******”

without being ridiculed.
Kids don’t go back to school
because if I became a teacher
the world would have a few more
smarter fools and a whole
lot more kids.

Maybe as a teacher,
I could inspire, and make one percent of a difference
Or even more.

A child teaching children,
What a concept!

“Never grow up 101” and  “Introduction to smiling”
If I could fufill learning to this stage,
It would be the world striking
And not the teachers.

Maybe its time for the youth of the planet
To strike back.

As an ode to the dead phone I once
Needed to recharge,
With a full battery of energy
I vow to live up to my full capacity as a tool of change
If my cell phone does to.

“Time to watch a little less Netflix and family guy kids,
lets turn on a Ted Talk, if you like them and want to be able
to outsmart those pesky grown ups, you should watch
them at home too!”

Ted Talks today’s lesson,
The peoples uprising in Egypt tomorrow.

There is a one percent chance of this happening.

I,m serving my sentence
Four weeks hard time
Being unemployed
Is my only crime

They sent me to felling
I did,nt think it was funny
But I had to serve my time
Or lose all my money

So I turned up on my course
Nervous on my first day
Then I met dave
Induction out the way

Straight down the factory
To the bottom shed
Putting paper into dumpy bags
Really blagged my head

So I shovel people,s ****
It Destroys my soul
But it pays Daves mortgage
And keeps 25 people off the dole

Then worked on the balers
Handballed cardboard and paper
Got to do the boring bumpers
But dave said I can do them later

Might get to go out on the van
Collecting people's ****
But it's a break from the shovel
If only for a bit

Got 25 boxes
To empty for Steve
More ****** dumpy bags
It's hard to believe

The lad I started with
His name was John
He managed one day
Now he is gone

Now he,s back to the dole
To see his advisor
Sanctioned to pieces
I would of been wiser

Just keep my head down
Do whatever I,m told
So my lovely advisor
Don,t stop my dole

Done 3days now
Just 25 to go
No good moaning
Just get on with the show

It's really not so bad
Shovelling people's ****
And it's that kind of job
We're someone's got to do it

So if you don,t like shovelling ****
We're you don't get paid a bob
Get of your **** of the dole
And get yourself a job

No offence to the **** shovelers
All over the  land
but I,m a man of verse
Not a **** shovelling fan

I passed a drifter sitting on the edge
Of the I-49 on-ramp
As he gave me a fleeting glance
With his thumb up-stretched.
Then I passed a driverless car
On the highway's shoulder,
Dented and sun-bleached,
Whose owner is probably sitting in a cell.

Every commuter and traveller:
We all pass these stranded souls
And remnants on our way to wherever,
Without a second thought.
The shredded tires and shattered bumpers;
Skid marks as a testament.
They might as well not exist.

Just last night I read about some woman
Seen on a security camera in New York --
Eating a burger, of all things --
Witnessing a car plow into three people on a sidewalk
Across the street from her.
She turned around, walked off.
Two people died in that moment.

It makes me think about those charity commercials
Of starving children that no one likes to watch,
And how the marketing team thought
Those desperate scenes might inspire
Someone to help.
But, even when tragedy is right next to someone,
They seem to go about their business:
Business as usual.

We have left ourselves alone,
And alone we decay.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

I know
it’s like getting hit at 120
waking up a week later
with fractured ribs,
a cut in my skull,
a feeling of uselessness in my limbs,
and a chronic mental trauma
meanwhile
all you got are
****** bruises
caused by the airbag that at least
saved you despite that,
a dent in the quarter panel,
minor damage to the bumpers
and it’s all ******* covered
by an insurance company
the headlines will be filled with something
like reckless imprudence
resulting to physical injuries
but you won’t need your lawyers anymore
because I promise you I will take the blame
anyway

You've created a lovely lie.
Perfectly crafted after tedious hours
with all the finishing touches, the shiny paint, the new tires.
A lie so beautiful you couldn't bear to sell it to anyone
But yourself.

You drove through the world in this lie
And allowed it to take you to unknown places.
Surpassed the limits and turned unexpected corners.
The most unbelievable joy ride.

One day, you're lie got you into an accident.
Boom. Crash.
It was destroyed in front of your eyes.
All your effort, your new world:
Gone.

You took a train back to reality.
You were not welcomed home with open arms,
but rather with judging glares and silent threats.
Many hours you spent on fixing up your lie,
Repairing the bumpers, changing the mirrors, cleaning the broken glass
But nothing could bring it back to life.

No more carefree riding
With the wind blowing back you hair.
You're happiness dissolved like rusted paint
That needs a new coat.

You searched for something to bring back your lie
But found no one willing to offer you
a pair of jumper cables.

So, what were you in for?
In for too much honesty?
In for getting well enough; or not forgetting well enough?
In for poetry and pottery and ***-err-y?
Or possibly
In for all you could handle, more than enough, and way too much.
Certainly not for kicking doors and bouncing bumpers.
I hope it was a healing exile. There on the inside.
So what are you in for now? There on the inside.
In for going where your help comes from?
In for standing on the solid?
In for leaning into the only One who ever was, and is, and always will be more than enough?
So, what are you out for?
Are you out for good?
Be out for Good.
There is only one Good.
Be out for Him.
He's certainly been out for you.