I shalt taketh her to the tadpole galaxy
Than to hoag's object
Than we shalt bypass the whirpool galaxy
Than onto sombrero's bright swirl.....
Than onto the pinwheel galaxy
Wherein we shalt be its pinballs,
Than up against the blackness of God's curtain of the universe abroad.... Onto the Andromeda, LMC to, than the milky way, earth's creational dust brew....
Bode galaxy shalt open us, to terrace of the aura, I shalt swayeth with mine home (mi amour') of distant mascara....
Yet she needeth no mascara, for her eye's art already arousing, **** elegant picture's, a model made in birth, her poetic stature's daily groweth bigger....her look's art a trigger, to take thee to thy face, making thee SEEITH dream's of thing's of holy grace!!!! An elegant being, with the spirit of an eagle, she soar's me to planet x, she's pure.....

The opposite of evil!!!!!!

There is nowhere to hold this, and it is heavy.

We drink coffee in white, square mugs
on the fifth ***** step.
I am sick and the coffee pinballs in my stomach.
You do not care about hydration.
You are covered in so much paint
you look like Matisse in a fender-******.
You look sore all the way down to your fingers.

The bed in the opposite room won't be yours,
but could be.

I lope around nauseous on the mornings
I don't work. I light candles that jump
with a stench of French Vanilla. Dogs bark
unholy early.
I tire of the anxious sleep of the newly living-there,
the newly living.
The loud neighbour,
the considerate neighbour,
the ******* dogs.

I open the bedside drawer.
No Gideon hotel bibles.
Condoms, picture frames,
instructions for a washing machine.
No Bibles.

Sometimes, I find it in my shoes - this envy -
or in my pockets.
And sometimes I drag it behind me,
like wedding cans on a bachelor's car,
filaments of grief and filthy broken dinnerware,
threaded cotton of towels
too often used without washing
and wine bottle bones.

And somebody once told me not to paint a
room in it, but this jealousy is sage, not lime,
and I could **** well sleep in here,
and sometimes do.

Coiled tightly, a spring
Loaded with thoughts.
Pinballs endlessly searching
For a top score.
Ricocheting in the brain
Like a flexible bullet,
Wreaking havoc without
The final word.
A blossoming idea
And a pen without ink.
The lethal archer
With a crooked arrow.
Never hitting the target.

On Sunday afternoons, I go to the Hy-Vee gas station and write up journal entries and/or just whatever ideas are floating around in my head.

In doing what I do for a living, I hear a lot of stories. Some of those stories are pretty tough. So, writing about the stories themselves or writing about the way those stories made me feel at the time is pretty essential. It keeps me clean, so to speak. Writing about work lets me keep the stories, so that I might learn a lesson here and there, while letting me let the pain, hurt, or other dirt go. Plus, as a bonus, I don’t get too worn out in the doing of the work. The writing staves off any empathy fatigue I might feel.

Also, I tend to wander around town in the evenings. I do it so that I might people watch and so that people can check me out.  That sounds a little odd doesn’t it?  I know. But, here’s why I do it…

My dad used to ask me, when I was a boy: “How many handicapped people do you see?”  “How many people that have an obvious disability do you actually see in St. Joe?”  “None. Except for me, I don’t see any.” I would answer.  And, at the time, at least for me, it was about 99.9% true.

“So”, Pops would say; “Be the one that people see.”

What he meant was that people are often fearful of what they see as different or don’t understand. We all know this to one degree or another, I hope.

So, in doing what Henry Rollins has taught me, at least while working all over Northwest Missouri, I try to put as much mileage on my crutches as I am able. While I’m out there I try to meet as many people and shake as many hands as I can.  I check people out and give them an opportunity to check me out. And, I write about those interactions.

I am a huge fan of the travel writings of both Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain. (I’m so sad that Tony left us. Really, it has been like losing a pal.)  However, while I don’t disagree with them that every American should have a passport that is well used, I know that for myself and a lot of Americans travel like those guys do, is a financial fantasy.

But, I can go to City Market in Kansas City, I can go to Cameron, Missouri, I can enjoy and ask questions of the other parents and patients when I take Alex to Children’s Mercy for appointments. I can and I do.   And, no one person has ever been anything less than kind to me. For each other, we are the “one that people see” and I think we’ve done ourselves and our stories as good a service as we can.

Recently, I opened up The Ritual a little. It morphed a bit when my pal Josh would join in. Both he and I would set up like we were going to write our next batch of poems and then we would start talking. We’d bounce around conversationally, just like two pinballs in a machine; there wasn’t a topic that either of us could think of that we couldn’t rail on for the two-hour parameter I’d set.  Neither of us got any writing done. I don’t think either of us cared.

That said, I’ve left The Ritual as it is now. I’ve put it out there on social media that I’m sitting at the Hy-Vee plaza, in Caribou Coffee writing on Sundays.  Sometimes Josh shows up, sometimes he doesn’t.  But, I keep the idea of conversation at the forefront of The Ritual. Sometimes, I think it’s more important than the writing that either does or does not get done.

Why? Because now, in this era of social media, we isolate too much. We feel like we really do have 547 friends or followers when really, we’re alone in our rooms with our smartphones, tablets, or laptops. I imagine if the only socialization I got was online, I’d be horribly lonely.

I’m not putting down Facebook or Twitter users. I am one. But, I want to talk to as many human beings as I can before I kick off.  

So, if you need to talk, want to talk, or like to talk...

It’s a Sunday Ritual soon and it’s all ours for the taking, and talking.

WALK THROUGH

Awake at 4 AM in a dark and silent house
There are ghosts and wraiths afoot in other rooms
And chimera dance across the walls.
Time has worn it’s foot steps into paths that lead the way
From one space where the sun shines morning rainbows
Through leaded beveled diamond glass
To rooms with shadows in the silent corners of regret
That fail to yield to hopes and promises of light.

Walls newly shorn of photographs and art
Stand in mute recrimination of the crime
That robbed them of the proof that people prospered here.
People blessed with messy lives that ricochetted like
Pinballs through the good times and disasters.
People who never learned to cheat but studied how to care,
Who gave a measure and a half for a quarter measure’s pay.
People who walked the narrow road until it ended in abyss
And now they have to find a way to to finish out life there.

The smell of tears still lingers in the lattice covered
Meditation bower in a corner of the garden
The little fountain proves unable to provide the only falling water
And the tiny pet grave markers remain resting there in peace

A bulky box with double doors commands most of the driveway
And things too valuable to leave are prisoners inside.
Clutter is trapped in cartons sealed with packing tape
Or hidden in the cupboards no one dares to open.
Untidyness moans softy in the newly emptied spaces
And the dust no longer has a place to land.

The winnowing is almost done and things will find new homes
In a sad bazaar of letting go the past
And turning to the East to meet the rising sun
Where somehow in a diferent place they all will learn to dance.
ljm

Not just a memory
But a stored moment in time that you savor

Not just a sound
But a wave of harmonious lyrics that tickles your eardrum

Not just a taste
But the flavor of many seasonings that bounces across your taste buds like thousands of pinballs

Not just a sight
But visual ecstasy that dilates the pupils and allows light to send blinding rays of optical bliss

Not just a feeling
But the pulsation of electrodes across the skin as it makes the thousands of hair follicles stand at attention

Take a moment to reflect and see that every day we are blessed with the gift of life...it's NOT JUST life, but it's the opportunity to hear new things, see new sights, taste new flavors, feel new feelings, and make brand new memories.

I held my heart on the tip of my thumb
And then I held my breath
As I hit send and my heart went careening across the keys into your phone
Do your eyes light up from the screen, the way my heart does when you call me?
I hope you know how to swim
Because I could of drowned you in words even though I cannot find them on the tip of my tongue
They catch in my throat and pour out my fingers like a glass knocked over on a table
My feet stop in their tracks as another memory pinballs through my head
It ricochets like a hundred bats flying in a cave
**** I miss you.
I could pour myself out to you like a pitcher
But I swallow my thoughts and they leave a bad taste in my mouth
I miss the taste of your kisses, so sweet and gentle, though a bit salty
Salty like the ocean and every bit as wet and wild as the water
'You are a fool' I tell myself
To stay awake dreaming when you could be sleeping instead

And from my  heart,
It is born,
pure and warm
Skipping through my body and making a trail of  tiny explosions
of happiness
Traveling to my fingertips which flex and clench,
as if there was something there to hold.
My chest tightens
trying to capture it but it escapes
to my throat getting stuck
Trying to wrap itself in sounds but
nothing  seems to fit quite right
So it floats
to my brain dwelling in a tizzy
trying to find the words
to describe how you make me feel.
I wish that when I sigh (because I feel so breathless)
my breath could manifest into a being and drift
to you
Settling on your skin, dotting it with small bursts of heat
as it pinballs around your  brain, leaving
a pleasant weight on your chest as it gently falls
upon your heart
and never again would we struggle to find the right words.

Descended stars nestle in the trees outside the stadium
supplemental moonlight whitewashes the locusts
pearly lines linger on the tar black sea
crickets creak on the screen door of summer.
Round white stars swirl in elderberry blackness.
Stare. Long enough to see them meet head on
Collide. Spinning in slow motion
celestial pinballs sliding across exploding endless night
shattering sparks that rise gold
Embers into purple shaded trees
falling in silver
plating the grass to face the amaranthine dawn

Remember when you were pink
in the head like bubble gum? I could
chew you in wads and move you
to corners of my mouth. And as we played

the bubbles would float in a parade. Strawberry-
lemonade sifted through the hairs of our
skin. We frolicked like unborn twins. Who would
go first? And push this *** out. We were

shiny silver pinballs hitting off the
bumpers. I was banging my foot vivaciously
as thumper. So much so I bore a hole
in your floor. And from then, everything else fell in.

of hailstones throwing
torches
cracking holes
in these back porches.
Dancing crimson
in a prison
of ice.
Shaking tales
as barnyard mice.

The sky is weeping
nectarines.
I stand behind
The back porch screen.
Wind whipping them all
like pinballs in a penny arcade
as I'm sipping lemonade.

Talking heads
these jack-o-lanterns
as I sit behind the curtain.
I carved the faces out myself,
hiding the knife in a book
up on the shelf.

Another night
of fitful sleep and the pain
of butchered sheep.
I'm on the lam.
And cooked just like
the holiday ham.

Town Full Of Sound

I use to live in
A town full of sound
With Roller Coasters
And Merry Go Round
Horns would blast
To sound an alarm

I use to live in
A town full of sound

I use to live in
A town full of sound
Pinballs were zinging
And barkers would hound
Foghorns were blaring
A mournful fog song

I use to live in
A town full of sound

I use to live in
A town full of sounds
Salt water taffy
Came clacking on down
The bandstand was swinging
Those Glen Miller songs

I use to live in
A town full of sound

I use to live in
A  town full of sound
Where all sorts of music
Played all over town
Screech of the crowd
As the Comet roared down

I use to live in
A town full of sound

Bill MacEachern May 2, 2024