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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
 Posted - 11/01/2013 : 19:14:38
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| "Wake up in the middle of the night..." He believes in the revelation in dreams. In sleep's informative power. He expects a certain finish by now. Something to show for all those put-away pages. Shovel work. Sore shoulders. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2013 : 13:40:42
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This old country is not healthy
The orchards have grown bare
And the woman at the well, she
Can't find water anywhere
She is old and suffers blindness
And she does not hear us sing
All she answers to is kindness
That's the water you must bring
DL
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 11/10/2013 : 02:55:31
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She's say it's her lucky day. Kisses me. Smiles.
I don't get it. Her lucky day? I must be in heaven.
Must be. All that way around the world she's come.
Trailing tears, but looking ahead with dreams that
won't die. I didn't think I'd ever feel this way,
ever again. It's her lucky day? Sure, I tell her,
kiss her back, laugh until I'm jiggling. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 11/11/2013 : 01:20:06
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HAUNT
We walk rain-shined street up the hill together
to our night haunt, BREKA, the place that never
closes. We can vouch for that.
Students with lap-tops spread their papers,
an older Indian couple shares red velvet cake,
a kid reads a book called DEAR LIFE.
We order two coffees, one decaffeinated. She
stirs honey into hers. We sit reading a book
about ROSE CHERAMIE, sharing a butterfly cookie.
A woman from Mashhad and a man from Moose Jaw
hold hands under the table, discuss the meaning
of the word NEFARIOUS.
DL
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 11/26/2013 : 06:51:11
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That last part of Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country For Old Men',
the book and the movie both, where the aging sheriff, Ed Tom,
chooses life (to cup and protect what little fire is left)
rather than to risk it all to continue after Chigurh.
Momma, take this badge off of me / I can't use it anymore /
It's gettin' dark, too dark to see / I feel I'm knockin' on
heaven's door..."
I figure that's as good an image as any for what has happened
to a lot of us who were young in the sixties, who chased
something through the decades since, a dream later transformed
through the dark truth of time into an assassin...
And as the day bends down into night, we turn and look around
at our loved ones and realize they're about all there is of
home anymore... |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2013 : 01:54:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Doug L
I figure that's as good an image as any for what has happened
to a lot of us who were young in the sixties, who chased
something through the decades since, a dream later transformed
through the dark truth of time into an assassin...
And as the day bends down into night, we turn and look around
at our loved ones and realize they're about all there is of
home anymore...
Reflections.
I was born in a shotgun shack
That leaned against a railroad track
I could hear the whistle blow
All the way to Del Rio
I was turning seventeen
When I packed up my hopes and dreams
Loaded my old beat up car
Turned the key and burned the tar
I burned that highway down in '59
Yes I burned that two-laned highway down in 1959
I never did look back I did not see that railroad track
But I burned that highway down in '59
Winter came in sixty-five
I fought the cold to stay alive
And when I tried to light a fire
I was burned by my desire
Winter came in sixty-five
I fought the cold to stay alive
And when I tried to light a fire
I was burned by my desire
There I was at twenty-four
Faded dreams and nothin' more
So I hit the road again
Oh that road its back my friends
The seventies were kind to me
I was young and I was free
Had it all and then some more
I could walk through any door
Then a star at eighty-three
Caught me too far out to sea
I hit a reef and I ran aground
On the streets of Guitar Town
I burned that highway down in '89
Yes I burned that four-lane highway down in 1989
And I never did look back
I could not see those railroad tracks
Burned that highway down in '89
I can hear my momma pray
Prayin' for a better day
I can hear my Daddy say
Honey I will find a way
He worked his fingers to the bone
To make that shotgun shack a home
He kept his sadness deep inside
He had that dream the day he died
I burned that highway down in '59
Burned that dirt road highway down in 1959
I never will look back when I don't see that railroad track
I burned that highway down in '59
So now keep my soul to the Hotel California
I get lost to the Mason Dixon Line
I have run there with a lady East of Eden
And I burned that highyway down in '89
Yes I burned that highway down in '89
I have run there with a lady East of Eden
I burned that highyway down in '89
Yes I burned that highway down in '89
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Edited by - Craig on 11/28/2013 01:56:37 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2013 : 16:08:06
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Promissory notes. Stories I tell the Sheriff.
I lived on a green street under a canopy of trees. Across the Sound city lights shone in November through chill air where there used to be Summer leaves. A skyline beyond the strict branches that beckoned with childhood memories. "Laugh before breakfast, cry before bedtime," Brigid McCleary's admonishment along with toast and a three-minute egg. Brigid was brought over from Clonakilty Cork to be my nanny. A kind-hearted woman who wore dense cotton stockings and sensible shoes. She'd dab at her eyes with embroidered handkerchiefs describing my "disgraceful deportment" to my patient father who'd nod and say, "...there, there, now, Brigid..." in his killer brogue. I was too curious to be a good child. I grew up in hotels hiding under the linen-draped banquet tables observing the grown-up world knee-high. When I finally got out on the street I found life in the library stacks and Village coffeehouses. In the cluttered markets and open cellar doors, the fire escapes wrapped in militant ivy...
Outside the light is leaking out of the sky and late commuters are rushing to catch the Coaster. He leans forward on the table and pushes the cups aside, "...go on," he says, "...keep talkin'..." Unreliable twilight making it impossible to read his expression. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 12/05/2013 : 19:09:22
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| She's used to his directness and intense blue gaze. They're in a club in crowded midtown where music is playing in a downstairs room all smoke and tiny tables. Neon sheen on rain-slick street at eye level through the grated window. Dark cars and taxi's idling at the curb. "...nothing sinister or impossible to sleep with...just vagabond memories. A restlessness that defies explanation. Safe in the tunnels where it was always night. Bright light anonymity. Rush and hustle. Violets and pretzels and Mont Blanc pens. Everything you needed in the subways..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2013 : 01:29:23
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| "...and after?..." he says. She's polishing the gravestones in Eden. "After the accident I was marched into Saint Pat's in my new school uniform Friday afternoons for Confession. I was nine with small opportunity for sin. I watched the other girls to see how long they stayed in the box. "Bless me, Father...." I said. "For your Penance, then, three Hail Mary's. Now make an Act of Contrition." Always the same three. Like a recipe or a prescription. I liked the Cathedral smell. The blue shadows. The banked votives and high-wheel chandeliers. The reassuring round-the-clock traffic. But I was sent to an archaic upstate town where I caught pneumonia and spent Christmas leaning over a croup kettle coughing. The voice in my head said 'run'. I became a diligent runaway until transferred to an orphanage near public transportation and a train across the Park. The same three Hail Mary's wiped the slate clean every weekend. Like fog or breath from a mirror. Winter-dark days when I felt grace raining down on me." He's quiet for several moments, then, "Were you lonely?" "I was wary," she says. He says, "...your hands are cold..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2013 : 22:35:36
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| Sitting still in places until they were stiff as stones. A coffee shop in Little Italy under wind and the flight path to Lindbergh. Mona Lisa across the street with her sly smile and specialty pizza menu. Star of India in the harbor rocking like a cradle. Jets threading nonsense between retrofitted high rises. "Pick up your feet when we fly over the parking garage," the pilots say. The stars stay up for hours over the honey glazed bay. Hot palms and check point deals where you buy what comes in through the window and pay for waiting in line. All the poets across the border remember his name. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 12/28/2013 : 17:45:23
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| They sit at many tables late into the nights. With each telling he raises the stakes. The unraveling thread in the corner is what keeps his eye. "Lean on me," he says, and places a frame around each story. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2013 : 17:47:08
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Marcella Delight, still beautiful with a champagne flute in her hand. Boughs and flickering candles on the mantle. She's showing me her new Rancho Mirage townhouse where the famous photographs of her dead beloved line the walls. A gallery of black and white except for the small framed picture on the nightstand beside her bed. Her gypsy-bright skirts hiked high in the middle of a shallow stream. His shadow crossing the water because of the angle of the light. I can tell by the trees it's somewhere in the north east. "The sorrow of his death never leaves me, but I've had to give up grief because it affects my arthritis... I know I've told you this before," she says, handing me several hand-written journals as we're saying goodbye.
There's long shadows on the desert floor before the switch-back Santa Rosas. Stones piling up memories on quiescent cairns in the quiet creosote air. All that kinetic energy loading the San Jacinto and San Andreas faults. I follow the speed limit all the way home. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 01/04/2014 : 18:02:14
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Before he cast her in the role, before he ever put his arms around her, before he knew her for one hour, "...I know everything about you..." he said.
"They fed me butter and bread. A sprinkling of sugar on top. They put me down for an afternoon nap. No rocking chair story. Simply laid on a bed with a white hobnail spread. A summer room on Nantucket before my parents arrived. They set my shoes in a bay window where filmy curtains billowed like sail. Rose hip bushes and glary ocean light. They closed the door quietly and their tiptoe voices retreated. I saw it and heard it at the same time. A faint whir of sound. A stealthy sleight of green. A hinged swivel head and alien eyes. Mechanical saw-tooth arms. The rush of terror when I knew it could fly. For an hour I watched it riding the curtains and inspecting my shoes. When they carried me back to the kitchen I had the popcorn imprint of the bedspread on my arms and legs. The chef caught it in his cap and they made a big show of taking it outside. But it wasn't a mantis while it was in the room. It was something else." "How old were you then?" he asks, sitting so close their knees and chairs are touching. "I could walk," she says, "...but I never wore those shoes again. Bronzed. Collecting dust on a bookcase shelf." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2014 : 19:04:02
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| Blue manicures and silver sequined capris parading down the Boulevard. Morning markets ablaze in Monterrey sunlight. Food trucks on every corner. Queso. Corn and lime. Priests in wide hats and black cassocks. Widows praying at the Panteon gates. Red cellophane on the taxi floor when the mourners step out with sticky fingers. There's a too-high curb on a stony back street where a woman rushes to meet her beloved. Dangerous shoes. All trust and abandon. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 01/27/2014 : 08:21:18
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| At the edge of evening in the Valle de Guadalupe a small house invents itself at the end of a rutted road. There's an old metal glider on a wrap-around porch with a fresh coat of turquoise paint. A white wicker chair with worn sunflower cushions. Behind the house is a post-rail fence and an untended vine-entwined arbor. In the photograph he's standing still although his silhouette appears to be moving. His walk, so rolling and easy as his booted right foot comes down. Bright yarns in the kitchen window beyond his shoulders. Eyes of God. A picture that makes her eyes sting and her fingertips burn. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2014 : 20:47:36
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| Slow-going on the Canyon roads. Fairfax to Sunset and up into the hills the nights fell down around them. His safe-harbor embrace. His endless reservoir of what was needed. His profile that never changes. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 02/13/2014 : 18:51:10
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| He's rolling his shoulders and stretching his wings. He's mapping a flight plan above the moon-bright black-top. He's racing the center-line down twenty-mile straightaways. Elbow out the window, AM music flying in. It seems they've been driving forever. |
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aussiedave
Swinger
Australia
509 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2014 : 01:02:04
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| John 1 verse 5 |
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aussiedave
Swinger
Australia
509 Posts |
Posted - 02/16/2014 : 00:30:31
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this love.
as Christ loved his church,
this,
a measure and depth of love,
immeasurable..
deeper than
the bottomless..
this,
like the ever expanding
universe,
a love
beyond human comprehension,
a love
forever unfolding,
all encompassing,
as it cleanses and purifies,
a holy love..
that lasts for all universal eternity
~~*~~
..so is the husband's love
for his wife,
he would die for her,
literally,
and unto himself,
for this love is
eternal,
this love
is never ending.
dR February 2014 |
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The Nightly Vigil