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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
 Posted - 04/30/2008 : 15:38:04
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This is the wallpaper in Cleveland in 1954
This is an October Sunday at Yankee Stadium in 1976
This is everything you wished I was and everything I wished I wasn't
This is too hot to handle and too much to bare
This is all I held back that you needed
This is the love of a lifetime passing in the street
This is the letters I meant to write
This is all the I'm sorrys we don't get to say
This is an aching deep inside from need
This is vanilla spice candles and the smell of cinnamon
This is tangible evidence of insanity
This is dancing crazy alone without being drunk
This is the poets trying to keep from drowning
This is the soldier who wonders why
This is seeing God in a woman's eyes and looking for it again forever
This is losing everything and starting over
This is what it's come down to
This is playing music and hearing the crowd applauding
This is perfect sex
This is postcoital postpartum postnasal depression
This is the off the beaten path without a paddle
This is the side of the road with no destination
This is vanilla chocolate and strawberry
This is going to the grocery store hungry
This is running with the scissors
This is tipping your cap to Don Quixote
This is waiting for the Rapture in a black suit
This is most of what you needed and a little of what you wanted
This is all you thought it would be
This is what you made it...
Yeah,
That's what This is...
Hank Beukema - 2008
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2008 : 22:20:07
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DO NOT BE ASHAMED
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty; you misread
complex instructions, and you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.
Wendell Berry |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 17:58:41
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In the middle of the road of my life
I awoke in the dark wood
where the straight road was lost.
--Dante |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 19:57:12
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Crossing America in five days hitchhiking was a big deal to me...
We used to have a question when you'd meet another hitcher-
How far'd you walk today?
That trip was no walking, it was three rides in three days and then
came the east. Took two days to get thru
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Thing was it was all backwards, sometimes.
The places you thought you'd get rides,
you didn't, and the places you thought you'd
never get picked up, you usually met some
nice folks and even got a meal or a room.
I did it in five days another time, but it
never counted with me cause I had a car.
It was somebody else's that I didn't know and
yeah, I drove all the way, straight thru myself,
but, I still had a car, and a girl.
The best was the six week crossing...
You get to See America that way;
not like a tourist, but from the underside up,
up the legs and across the belly,
feeling the muscle and the fat,
the back roads and the seldom scenes,
the single school teachers in Illinois bored enough to
pick up a stranger, the small town kids in Utah that think
you're something out of television or movies,
the families in Okie station wagons that take you home
for a bath and a meal and a warm bed.
The rotting side of the cities that only the trains see
and the waves of grain that go on for days.
I think sometimes that
the rivers and the beaches and the highways were my college,
and the hobos and the wise guys and the kind strangers of America
were my teachers...
I'm still working on that diploma...
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 20:26:43
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Small flashes of life
interspersed between long periods of
just breathing make up our days...
As time goes on, as we grow older and older,
the flashes move together in our memories
like one long tapestry, all as one piece...
We learn, we prepare, we nourish ourselves
for and from these flashes...
Everything else is just breathing...
Hank Beukema - 2006
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 20:45:55
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As we approach the latter years, we have reflections. Reflections of our lives, reflections of times past, reflections of ourselves...
These are the best times of our lives.
Craig |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1825 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2008 : 22:51:49
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Her footprints were heavy in the sand as she walked out
to the ocean's waves rolling in from thousands of miles away.
Just to dip her toes in the water connected her somehow to
those faraway lands, unknown to her, but still there. Almost
out of her mind with excitement, her Golden Retriever romped
and splashed, always looking back at her to make sure she was
still there. Her world would be truly lonely without this
wonderful creature that she called Goldie. She looked back
toward the house and stopped. A car was pulling into the
driveway. She wasn't expecting anyone. Goldie sprinted toward
the house like a young filly. "GOLDIE !! STOP !! ... GOLDIE !! "
BarbraG
AKA BGee
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2008 : 19:40:19
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Edited by - buckman on 05/16/2008 14:14:27 |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2008 : 20:50:20
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HELLO?
After hours, entering a space he only knows by day.
The lock opening louder than before.
He punches in the code to stifle the alarm, hoping
it works. Otherwise, the police will come and he will
be nervous explaining.
When he flicks the switch upward, the light comes
on suddenly, fully, and he squints, raising
one arm to shield his eyes.
Where eight hours earlier there was a cacaphony
of workplace sounds, now there is silence
and the click of his shoes on the tiled floor.
He stands there, peering at the photographs
of co-workers who have died. They look right at him,
their smiles still alive. He touches their faces.
A different scent here at night. The Mexican family
has done its cleaning, and he smells the wax
they have put on the cafeteria floor.
He is startled when the phone rings, uncertain
whether to answer. The message machine comes on.
A woman's voice, Indian in cadence, says hello.
Hello?
He wonders if it is the wife he's never found,
if she has tracked him down at last this Friday night
here on the coast. Hello? she asks again.
As he goes to pick up the phone there is a dial tone.
The machine clicks off. No name, no number,
just that round, sincere question. Like a small bell.
He reaches in his coat pocket for the flask, takes
a drink and turns on the radio in the manager's office,
finds the late night jazz program on CBC.
It's an old Bill Evans number, Peace Piece.
Solo piano. He turns out all the lights, sits back
in the manager's big chair, feet on the desk.
Bill plays the piano shyly, as if touching a girl's
hands for the first time. As if the sensation has taken
all language from him except for touch.
There is a darling soul that waits in each of us,
waits for a moment to come like a hand
to touch our cheek, say small important things.
It is a hand that already knows the imperfect
places, the scar, the fallen fruit. It touches us with
a knowing, and we breathe toward our tears.
Hello?
It is almost two in the morning when he wakes up.
Radio Sweden has taken over the CBC. He presses
the button to hear her voice one more time.
DL
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2008 : 07:02:41
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Visiting Cloud Peak with Priest Tenge in Fall
Human existence in this world:
Duckweed cast adrift on the water.
Who can ever feel secure?
That is the reason
I took up a monk's staff, left my parents,
And bade farewell to my friends.
A single patched robe
And one bowl have sustained me all these years.
I'm fond of this little hut
And often spend time here-
We are two kindred spirits,
Never worrying about who is guest or host.
The wind blows through lofty pines,
Frost chills the few mums that remain.
Arm in arm we stand above the clouds;
Bound as one, roaming in the far beyond.
-Ryokan (1758-1831)
-"Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf" |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2008 : 07:53:41
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We had a plan.
We were going to catch up for the first time
since we'd been together.
Took a three year bank loan,
invested in some coke,
alot of coke.
The plan was to step on it, sell it,
pay our bills,
catch up,
get out from under,
start again.
We sat at that table for a long time,
hours, days,
back and forth to the bedroom,
then back to the white mountain
on the table.
In a week it was gone.
The loan lived on for the three years.
Make The Gods laugh.
Make a plan...
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2008 : 18:27:23
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"You are broken only if you break."
~Mickey Newbury~ |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2008 : 18:33:28
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| A snub of candle between them when he turned the hour glass upside down. His long shadow already in crisis. His cherished face, harrowed, but not distraught. "Tell me a story," he said, "make it last the night." Time passed. A century or three. The power on Cielo Azul flickered but never went out. They looked up at the sizzling stars. The squadrons of Angels, the legions of Saints. "Listen," he said, "sometimes I get tired of flying above the clouds and I look for a warm corner to lie down in. The dreamsleep is as much a miracle as the flight." |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 15:13:16
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LATE FRAGMENT
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 18:51:52
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"It wasn't for music
you came to me, but
for daring - mine
and yours."
~Tess Gallagher~ |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 19:21:28
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Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,
listening to the sound the water made,
and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.
For a while I even let myself imagine I had died --
and that was all right, at least for a couple
of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.
As I way lying there with my eyes closed,
just after I'd imagined what it might be like
if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.
I opened my eyes then and got right up
and went back to being happy again.
I'm grateful to you, you see.
I wanted to tell you.
Raymond Carver
(from "For Tess") |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 19:40:34
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"Soooo... Dream and fly.
I'm holding your heart out of harm's way."
~Mickey Newbury~ |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/16/2008 : 14:14:51
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That first year married, we lived in a shack...
No kidding, a shack. Your garage is probably
bigger than this was. And it was for two families.
A deluxe shack.
But, at that point, both of us fresh off the road and
twenty years old, it was better than a cave, on a beach
or the parents basement.
We'd met on the road in California and
came back to NY to get married;
just for the Hell of it...
and alot of it was,
Hell, caused by both,
to be fair and generous to,
well, me...
But, there was a fair amount of Heaven, too,
those twenty years.
I'm sorry, DD, wherever you are,
for the shacks and the bad jobs and
mostly for you never getting to see me
all grown up,
finally...
[almost]
It's been a long road without you.
You know,
that first year married I don't think we ever slept...
~*~
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2008 : 00:05:24
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He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him, habit being so strong
Raymond Carver
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2008 : 07:18:07
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Duke Ellington riding in the back of his limo,
somewhere in Indiana. He is reading by lamplight.
Billy Strayhorn is with him, but asleep.
The tires hiss on the pavement.
The Duke goes on reading and turning the pages.
-Carver |
Edited by - buckman on 05/17/2008 07:18:37 |
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The Nightly Vigil