timber habitats are vanishing, on the Earth's mass
timber habitats are vanishing, on the Earth's mass
bulldozers and axes, lethal their mix
bulldozers and axes, lethal their mix
on the Earth's mass, bulldozers and axes
vanishing timber habitats, lethal their mix

the number one priority, where is the preserving and conserving
the number one priority, where is the preserving and conserving
tree dwelling creatures, served eviction from their homes
tree dwelling creatures, served eviction from their homes
preserving and conserving, tree dwelling creatures homes
from eviction, the number one priority

tree felling goes on unabated, wooded residencies destroyed
tree feeling goes on unabated, wooded residencies destroyed
profits to be ever reaped, satiating the logger's greed
profits to be ever reaped, satiating the logger's greed
unabated the logger's tree felling goes on
satiating greed destroyed, wooded residencies reaped

wood residencies destroyed, on the Earth's mass
served eviction from their homes, tree dwelling creatures
timbered habitats are vanishing, the number one priority
profits to be ever reaped ,bulldozers and axes lethal their mix
tree felling goes on unabated, satiating the logger's greed
where is the preserving and conserving?

           Your past, your romantic past, is a shadow. Like all towns, Port Angeles was a combination of rain and clouds, sun and mist, with a chamber of commerce, barrooms and boards of directors, the known and unknown. No one of course is completely unknown. I was known for my tragic love life. She had found another man, a backwoods man, living on the land but not above a night on the town, who according to her would wipe snot on his pants, a statement of poverty or thrift or anger against the niceties of society. All of us heated our hovels with wood but only the rich burned hardwoods, me and probably this guy were softwood gatherers.

            There were few aspects to my life. First, I can remember a nook in the kitchen of the house I shared with a beautiful faceless woman who wore a ring in her nose where I wrote and watched flocks of unidentified birds comb a tree for seeds. This particular day the sky was blue with clean pillowy cumulus clouds floating toward Puget Sound. I believe all the poems written in that nook have been forgotten by their author.

            Nights, for entertainment, I would wander the aisles of the supermarket, admiring everything and buying nothing. I had no money. The fluorescent lighting, clean straight neat shelving and floors, warmth and the fact I could identify nobody attracted me. I lived on cream cheese and honey sandwiches eating them leaning against the kitchen sink. Thinking go back to New York City which is what I ultimately did. Drove cross country nonstop three days and three nights seeing and feeling nothing.

           I populated P.A. during the Reagan recession inherited from Carter. I'm unclear how presidents affect your life but good or bad, democrat or whig, alive or dead you've got to get a job, which I did. I supervised the living arrangements of developmentally disabled adults in what I thought were humorous contexts that gave no offense. They were beautiful and incorrigible having regular *** without protection. Normally harmless they'd sometimes have altercations with their neighbors. I balanced the checkbooks, paid the bills. Supposedly teaching living skills, I had few of my own as evidenced by my sleeping on the floor, I had no bed. One mature woman colleague judged me a short-timer living a useless fantasy about big cities. Still lost in my own history, still didn't know the calculus.

            I had a dog, Shade, black lab, leftover from my near-marriage until she realized I had no economic prospects, no interest in further *** or her logger boyfriend, and a complete inability to translate or imagine nesting and gestation. My homework comes to me in daily disconnected increments. Shade lived in my gray van, a Dodge slant six, which I could never afford to fix. Once the driveshaft disconnected from the rear axle and I tied it on with rope. Drove 60 miles on a knot. Shade was hyper and sad, both. He smelled bad but was a good dog with a lonely heart. When my wife who wasn't a wife finally found a boyfriend who wouldn't wipe snot on his pant leg they took Shade to British Columbia where I believe he runs free on a vast estate by the sea. I once beat Shade like a slave because he attacked a small dog out of frustration and loneliness and until I had kids and started saying and doing things just as bad to humans it was the lowest meanest moment of my life. The farmer who saw it will never forget or forgive it.

            Having confessed all this there's just one last fact to tell. The mountains were cold, the waters clear, deep snow and shadows.

My mother was
a first generation lesbian.
My father,
a first generation divorcee.
His father was the one child
of a public school teacher.
He found my grandmother at 18.
A farm child, one of seven.
A painter, a baker.
My mother's father
a single boy to three sisters.
His aggressive masculinity
kept the line clear and thick.
He found my mother's mother at 17.
A middle of seven Pentecostal children.
A beauty queen, an agoraphobic.
Each had five children.
The door-to-door salesmen/
homemaker and mother of boys duo
bet it all to open a hobby shop.
They were by far the poorest of the
watermelon farming siblings.
They were artists and explorers.
The high school graduate and ladies man,
was a logger before a father.
And the single mother of 25 he left
scarcely left her home at all.
Neither pair made it big.
But they made my father.
A lonely, post middle aged man.
The poorest of his brothers.
A used to be pilot,
and could have been teacher,
a want to be pioneer.
A nuclear family super fan
who never got his way.
And they made my mother.
A nervous, eccentric hippie
who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings.
A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class.
A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother.
Even if accidentally so.
She has plans to travel.
He has dreams to live by a lake.
And they made me.
A single girl among three boys.
A quirky, nervous tomboy.
A thinker, a gardener, a climber.
A loser and a dreamer by blood.

A pleasantly bubbling creak murmurs softly, complacently flowing as a creak does, day in and day out
By the crumbling bank stands a strong willow tree, rooted by the prolfic stream
Thoughtlessly taking the water of which it needs, a simple commodity to a tree of such stature and poise
And gracefully, beautifully shivering at the base of his trunk, there lives a daisy, white and pure
The willows roots indulge themselves, thirsting, thirsting for more
Negligent to the flower below who makes its view that much more lovely
Than just a simple stream, and who provides to the animals and children a blustery smile
Beckoning them to the shade where they might play and the daisy might watch over them
And as the roots take and take they choke the misguided flower, leave her to wither
One soft petal falls to the grass rendering her no more than a tainted ****
No child will ever present her to his good mother now
Not now that she is no longer the pure beauty she once was, not with such an imperfection
And though she may beg for mercy, she must weaken and give herself to the strong roots of the willow
Until she is but a dying cause with browned stale edges and though she lay so close to life, stable life
She does not possess the power to take rein so she the sage awaits the logger in silent knowingness

There he was, Archibald Walker, like every mornin standin on the riverbank starin across the water as the sun began to rise.  He would just stand there with his lunch pal in one hand and that funny bowlers hat in the other.  That boy always had a big ol’ grin stretchin across his face from ear to ear.   Archibald Walker the third was actually his name.  A college boy from down south, he came from ol’ money.  You’da never knew though.  He came up here to escape he said.  I had always wondered why anyone in their right mind would give up money and education to come be a logger, but there was Archibald just starin across that river as happy as a peach.  I used to ask him what he learned down there in school and he would always reply the same way, “Good Jokes”.  I never could tell if he was being serious or if he just didn’t care too much to talk about it.  Archibald was real good at his job though for being a college boy.  Came in before everyone else and worked ten times as hard. Never did see him ***** up either.
He liked to keep to himself.  I was the only one he ever really talked to and even then he never talked about much.  Took me a year and a half just to figure out he was educated and from money.  I looked at that boy funny for a week after he told me that.  I was dumbfounded as to why someone would give that up for this gruelin job.  Funny thing is, he seemed to like it.  He had to clear up logjams and keep the wood flowin smoothly down the river.  Boy was he fast.  He would skip across them floatin logs like he was walkin on dry land.  There he’d go just a bouncin up and down across them logs, big smile across that baby face, with that funny lookin bowlers hat on.  He always had on that goofy thing.  Looked like someone had glued a bowl onto a plank’a wood.  I asked him why he liked wearin it so much one day and he just laughed and said, “Now what makes you think I like wearing it”.  Still don’t know what that boy meant, but I never took to tryin to understand him.
Everybody called him Walker cause he walked across them logs all day and it was his last name I suppose, but mostly cause he loved walkin them logs.  It was a dangerous job, but he never hesitated to go runnin out there with his push pole and clear the jam.  I told him to be real careful what logs he pushed outta the way cause if he got the wrong one, well he would end up crushed out there between two of those god-awful things.  He told me we all end up stuck between two pieces of wood in the end anyhow, so he didn’t care.  Boy shoulda listened.  Wasn’t a week later he went walkin out on them logs, smile and all, and wouldn’t you know it he sliped, got crushed between two big ole trees then sank all the way to the bottom of that river.
We searched the river for three days and never did find Archibald’s body.  It was sad to see that boy cut down so young.  We hired a new boy about a week later and he wasn’t half the walker Archibald was.  He wasn’t even a walker.  Nicknamed that boy crawler cause he was so scared of them logs he would lay down on his belly and crawl out there to fix a jam.  Three separate occasions we picked him up a mile down the river clingin to a log for dear life.  Boy was something else.  Needless to say we let him go down the river the fourth time and politely told him to not come back.  Symbolic in away.  Archibald got taken by the river and that’s how we let crawler know he was fired.  Just let it carry him away until he finally reached the bank a mile or so down river.
I finally took Archibald’s post after we couldn’t find anyone to replace him.  I won’t lie I was scared at first, but then I remembered what Archibald had told me about all of us endin up stuck between two pieces of wood in the end.  I figured he was right so I would just go boundin across them logs day in and out just like he woulda.  I still didn’t know why that boy was always happy.  Even though I did the job, I still hated it. For a while anyway.
One day I came in about the same time Archibald used to and I stood there on the edge of the river and watched the sun come up.  I knew why he was so happy all the time.  Boy it was the most beautiful thing seein that sun comin up.  It was like for a second the world was just explodin with life. I’m not sure what it’s like to have money and be educated, but I’m sure it’s nothing close to watchin that sun come up like that over the river.  Wouldn’t ya know it though when the sun was done risin and I was about to finally get to work there was that goofy hat of Archibald’s washed up on the bank.  It was a little soggy but not in bad shape.  It was like that boy knew I was gonna be there and had just left it for me.  That hat didn’t fit to well and it looked awfully funny, but I wore it everyday I went walkin them logs.  Now I start everyday like Archibald did, standin on that riverbank with my lunch pal in one had and that bowler hat in the other watchin the sun come up.  Still don’t know why that boy wore the thing, but I’m glad he did.

A shadow on the wall,
I have become that,
Something few to none notice
I'm content at this state

For now I am the silent
The innocent one I am
I'm sweet and smart
People pay me no heed

But still I dress to conceal,
Not too loose, not too tight
To loose and I drown in fabric
To tight and I get mocked.

Will they let me be?
Can I break out and become
Something worth while
Now that I'm no logger taunted?

We'll see as high school passes
Am I still hated for my body?
I don't want to be silent anymore
I've built myself into a cage and I want out.

Why do these things hit us
Like a bird hitting a brick wall
So unnatural and so unneeded
Why do they haunt me

I wonder why is anger, so easy to father
It comes from most scenery
But is difficult to gather
I want it to wilt away
A tower block of fury

When will I be a wood cut man
So tall and full of stamina
O make me difficult to fell
O make it so I understand you as well

The Quandary©

Standing high on the mountain side
I take in the first breath of morning
It seems so much more refreshing here
Maybe it is the altitude that we are at

The aroma of my morning brew reaches my nostrils
The steam a reminder of the time of year
As I survey the pristine landscape my thoughts wander to home
Father would be at the farm readying for harvest

He too would be having his first cup of java
I can hear mother in the background reminding him of something
Soon he would be culling the herd for winter meat
Isn’t that what people say I do, cull

Yet for me gazing down the hillside it does not feel the same
Sure I do this with my fellow men to survive
But it feels like to me that we are taking them out in their prime
That somehow it is a travesty

Back at some headquarters they will remind that others will follow
We are only doing what needs to be done
That much good will come of what we will do today
And in that is my quandary

I see them fall some younger, some older, some not at all
Those few spared to provide seed for new generations
That last gasp is the same regardless of their age
The word “timber” signaling their death knell

That which took decades if not centuries to grow
Will be felled in a matter of minutes
The tree which has lived longer than I now dead
A seedling placed where it so proudly stood

I am a logger
But you can call me Bob

Andreas Simic©

Ted Talks in the background, the rush of forming in to me time.
A test, a lure, a net, yes

Sunday, December 09, 2018
11:24 AM

A Beta test, they bet the tithe on the human race.
Wisdom set the milestones,

Pillars to bear the weight of knowing both
possible and impossible no matter how the alpha

bet degrades under pressure to conform, for
Short term gain,

how far out can a man imagine, how future can one be?

Mathematically, wherever, where, in ever, you are you are now.

A platform
A standing place
A flat butte above a

Broad alluvian fan laced with gravity formed fiords,
see, look, we live on a whole world which
is fractured and half frozen.
All of us, ever, have lived here.

Google earth.
Use the tool you have.

See farther than you imagine you can.

Take time,
you have some of your own, right?

You breathe?
Take one breath for only you.
Listen, as you breathe, is this a voice

or mere words we imagine meaning more

than then when we imagined

we were seeing through goggles,
no peripheral augmentation,

goggles with blinders, urban adapted tech
from the old days,
blinders?

War horses in the Iron empire wore blinders,
Chariot racing war horses always wear blinders,

boys watching wagons in movies would notice blinders
if such boys had grown to knowing idle from not in

my realitiy. Itified, but run within,
disconnected from competing reality ifications
I inherited with the wind.

Watch the welder's goggles, see when he removes them,
don't attempt to see what he saw through them,
trust me, he was not making gods.

I say again. Radio to now.
re-ad re-al re-wise devize a way where there
nor there
nor there, nor then, nor then and there
is no way to seem, no other
being than being, as a verb.

No else.
Oh, well, I'll tell.

A heretic is a self-willed entity able to think about thinking,
e-special when time is in turmoil,

We all have our life and being in time, at the moment.
We behave, then one has an urge, a whim, a fantasy…

see further, see different, ex-spire-ment. Bet that breath,
the one you took for yourself,
the one you treasure.

Take a step,
Fear not, giant steps feel like falling going down and
mountains going up, but get some altitude

see where the snake in the core of the magneto sphere
shed its skin, shook off the dust of the third world,
attached each spec of dust,
be it any element or rele mental in the re-alm of Whatsoever,
a single gravity bound drop of water.
In that,
Suspend the noble miner-als, dis-solve the salts and acids and such

Let the eukaryotic work on version 2.0, epi-genetically, as
they shall say, some day, after the fact.

A little leaven, the kingdom is like that, when it works.

Wanna bet this makes some dust? Did you sneeze? Or me?

think now, 's no co incidence, me writin', you readin'
it happened. A hap hapt. We share that,
infection effect.

We breathed an effectual breath, together,
in and out, the clues are everywhere,

the better man won, then we became better,
both, wombed and un. one another we

make, effectual we, make good,
by our very nature,
born, as we were post the information deluge
that washed the blinders from our
children's eyes, for ever after.

we can be the side-bet clan,
betta value, betta moment of your own time
attention to the mean
general inteleosity
of being better,

being better beta testers for effectual fervent hope
for good for goodness sake.

Heroes go through hell.
We never pitch a tent and dance around Pandemonium.

The bet. AI is or am?
See it logger rythmical,
Ax,
hands to handle to tool to cut, break, scrape.
How would you, you, chop a tree?
Eat? You, not ancient ancestor you, you

manifested mature **** sapien sapiens augmented you,
what do you think will make life, in general,
be tending toward your happy ever after,

after silence, for about the space of half a time?

Hey, how do I say looky here here?
I am
alone.
Ah,
some know Ah, she knows,
Wisdom has a way, a wombed man,
beyond the original
ginal general gentle plan for an atom on this scale,

but nothing is impossible, so something must be done.

Progress, motion.
Relative to what, do you perceive motion?
Whence base ye di-rect e-rectors forming lines

point A to point B to so on soon as someone
sees forever in the apple of his Grandma's eye.

[found on a stele in northern Baja, 2018. Interpreted, sometime later]
(ragpicker's note: this thread links to a junkyard near a Green Book,
The Loma Vista, listing.) The sign, in those days, read:

Axles greased for free.

The symbols mean now that people
travailed along these old stone roads,
and kindness in the journey
greased the wheels in the wheels of those
auto-mobile-means of travailing.

Axles greased for free. Will sing for my supper.
Will you wont you will you join my dance?
Free
Golden oils,
gifts from the whale that ate my father for
non-monetetical bearing
of the wait to know,
wheel,
before it squeeked.

Itching ears, hear? The squeeks, the growns as the old
home stretches,
like her skin's too tight,

Ah, intelligence generally
available for the price of the tools used to use
any knowledge perfect
or perfecting
effecting
affecting the manufacture of you, Roll on,

out to infect the masses shopping for hope.
Sneeze for me, say Ah. We knew her when…

Wisdom was the reason for the season.
The principal setter of the sakes,
also set beginning and end.

Side-bet. 2 bucks, I bet time is temporary.
Paypal me when you lose. Ten to one, my favor.
Collect from Wisdom if you win. Even money.

Who's Who?


“We're twins,” I said, the mirror looked horror
struck my image turned and fled, profound is
the indefinite glacial depth, the horrifying  
loneliness of a mirror that only sees itself.  

A gardener  wearing my shoes is pruning
a rosebush, while I'm a tree near the window,
living in fear of the logger's chain saw.

No image, I'll fall into a black hole of vacuity
and why is a hole always black? Can't it be red
or green? I'm a blue apostle, in a naïve painting,
forever walking on a lane flanked by fearful trees.

Her name was Maddy, a young logger by trade;
Her face still on old plasticized signs;
Please step forward. Welcome to the Highway of Tears,
B.C.’s picking ground of violent crimes.
Girls come, women go, never to be seen;
People fear what they don’t understand.
Isolation lingers near the edge of the road
While moments pause, the unanswered demand:
“We need to know where you went in the woods,
We know you set up camp by the lakeside;
Others arrived and soon a large party began,
Then you disappeared, now others hide”.
Fifty years of spirits watch from high above
The vast expanse of the wilderness highway.
Unanswered questions still linger and remain
With only hints at answers to this day.
“Please talk to us Maddy, are you now safe”?
As our minds wander this miasmal mist;
You will always be loved, our search will never end
Until you come home, are tightly held and kissed.
But her eyes look on from the old plasticized sign,
No hidden hiding place has been found so far.
The mystery continues, our thoughts still focused
On finding you, wherever you are.


http://madisonscott.ca/

Asleep in a slumber,
held down,
by the lumberjacks
They were sitting,
on the natural wood slats,
with logs on top of that,
but in the dream,
a woodchopper,
and, logger,
was ready to fell,
with skill that you can't sell
On the scene
and, ended the dream
will return,
in slumber,
to reconvene
Lumberjacks,
you were,
not as heavy,
as you seemed
Neither skilled,
at Felling a woman,
who dreams

© 2021 Carol Natasha Diviney