"When The Wind And Light Are Working Off Each Other"

 

 “Oh, I love it when the wind shakes the trees this way.”

I paused to look at the row of trees as they shook in the wind. Each of them three or four storeys tall, their branches were shaking wildly, leaves flailing. If they’d been that new kind of piezoelectric windmill, they’d have been generating an immense amount of electricity.

“Oh, come on,” Beppe groaned (almost whined, really). “Enough with your ‘Children of the night, what music they make’ routine. Let’s get going.”

“Dude, you have no appreciation for nature. I’ll bet if we did hear wolves howling outside the cabin when we were up there, you’d complain about that.”

I did continue walking, though.

“There aren’t any wolves in the Coast Range, are there?”

“Not yet. Maybe soon.”

“Man, that’s nuts. Why would we allow them to come back, when there are so many of us living in Oregon now?”

As we got closer to the house, we approached a place where a row of tall hedges were being tossed by the wind, and the top of their shadows fluttered around our feet like dry surf.

I pointed down.

“Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah, okay, don’t stop, wouldya?”

“For cryin’ out sake, why be like that? The world around us is beautiful, and all you can do is grumble and kvetch.”

“I just want to get home, is all.”

“Okay, okay. Man, I’m coming.”

I sighed. If he needed to pee, he should just say so.

 

 

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-wind-and-light-are-working-off.html

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Corvallis really is lucky to have so much beautiful weather."

In Season

 

“…in season or out of season

“Stand up and back him in all men’s sight, with that for his only reason.

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide

“The shame or the mocking or laughter

“But the thousandth man will stand by your side

“To the gallows-foot…and after!”

I looked up at her to try to read her expression. Would she be utterly horrified at the thought of my reciting Kipling as part of our wedding vows? Complete with misgendering her?

There were tears in her eyes.

“Is that really how you see me?”

“Am I wrong?”

She bit her lip.

“I hope not, but it’s a lot to live up to.”

I wrapped my arms around her.

“I’m not wrong. I’m not. We’ve been through too much, apart and together, to be able to afford being wrong. You are much more than one in a thousand.”

She kissed me. It felt good to be kissed by that tear-wet face.

 

 

 

 

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stepping-westward/

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "I wouldn't know, I've never kippled."

I Wonder If I Will Miss

 

“I wonder if I will miss my headaches.”

“What?”

“Stranger things have happened. There’s a familiarity to the ritual of feeling the pain begin to gather, of taking my pills, of going through my routine, hoping they will work, feeling the pain recede, or else feeling it worsen and having to do more and treat it more aggressively, interrupt what I’m doing, lie down, cover my eyes, listen to soft music, touch my body gently, sometimes having to do that all day and still the pain doesn’t go away.”

“It doesn’t sound that appealing.”

“It’s not, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’m getting the surgery. I’m just thinking, if it actually does stop the headaches, it’s going to be a significant change in my lifestyle. I really am going to be something of a different person.”

“You know what this reminds me of? That TV show, The Millionaire. You know it?  A mysterious rich guy gives you a check for a million dollars to see how it changes your life.”

“Oh, yeah. That would be a cool show: The Pain Taker removes one source of chronic pain from your life. All of a sudden you no longer have headaches, or carpal tunnel syndrome, or chronic fatigue.”

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Go for it, baby."

 

https://thedailyrenegade.com/i-wonder-if-ill-miss-the-moss-by-jane-mead/

How Will I Hide?

 

“It’s funny. Have you ever read the original story, Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?”

“The original? By Stevenson? No, I guess I haven’t.”

“It’s funny. The original story doesn’t have anything to do with seeking to separate a man’s good and evil sides or anything like that. It’s just a mystery story about the relationship between this respectable doctor and his ugly new friend. Who is this Hyde person, where did he come from, why does Jekyll insist that everyone be nice to him and let him have his money? People think Hyde must be blackmailing him, but Jekyll doesn’t act the least bit like a man being blackmailed, he just acts like a man who is enjoying indulging his new best friend.

“So, the drug Jekyll is taking isn’t revealed to the reader at first?”

“Right, not until the end. It isn’t until Jekyll is caught out and he has killed himself that he leaves a note explaining how he created a drug that can change his appearance. It was only because he didn’t worry about Hyde’s reputation that he acted so wild as Hyde – he’d always wanted to carouse that way, and had done some of it in secret over the years, and now he could do all he wanted.”

“Ah. And Hyde ran wild, and became more and more brazen, and violent.”

“Yes, eventually he did things as Hyde that could send him to prison, so he knew he had to stop using that identity, but by then, he was changing without taking the drug, at random times. He was trapped, so he killed himself. But again, none of this had anything to do with Hyde being a separate person, it was just a disguise.”

“Weird. Funny how the story has changed so much.”

“Yeah. Also, Hyde was shorter than Jekyll, not bigger, as he is often depicted.”

“Hah. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hyde is their Incredible Hulk. He even has a line, I guess Jekyll has a line, saying Hyde used to be shorter than him”

“Perfect example. I read that series, I loved it, but it’s got a Jekyll and Hyde who’re totally different from the original.”

“I do like the ways in which the story changes and slides around. It’s fun. But I didn’t know how different the origin was.”

“Neither did I. I read the original while because I’m working on a story in which Jekyll is an elderly man working on a rejuvenation formula that will take a few years off and extend his life a bit, but it winds up turning him into a young man who doesn’t look anything like himself, can’t pass himself off as Jekyll’s son or disguise himself as the aged Jekyll, so he is obliged to take on an entirely new identity. It’s different enough from the original that I could take away the Jekyll and Hyde element entirely, but I kind of like it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I hope it will be. By the way, I found out from the foreword to the book that Stevenson intended the name to be pronounced ‘Jee-kull’, but even I’m not such a pedantic twit that I’d try to insist on it now.”

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pbeile/3142891992/

[I have a feeling that link may not be good indefinitely, so I’m putting the whole poem, Question by Mae Swenson, below.]

Question

 

Body my house

my horse my hound

what will I do

when you are fallen

 

Where will I sleep

How will I ride

What will I hunt

 

Where can I go

without my mount

all eager and quick

How will I know

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure

when Body my good

bright dog is dead

 

How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door

and wind for an eye

 

With cloud for shift

how will I hide?

 

From Another Animal

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

Still Singing Through

 

“Some days, I really can feel her,” I said as I dug my hoe’s tines through the dirt, pulling morning glories from around the roots of the pea vines.

“Feel whom?” Glory asked, not looking up from her own hoeing.

“Gaea. Remember when Dad said that he could feel Gaea singing through the soil while he worked it?”

She exhaled loudly.

“No, I totally don’t remember that. But he said a lot of things, especially when he was stoned.”

I chuckled.

“Don’t be mean. That wasn’t anything like ‘Baximltr’.”

None of us were ever going to forget the time we’d found those letter written on the kitchen wall one morning, and Dad had come downstairs to find us looking at them, puzzled, and he had looked at it and sighed in disappointment, and said, “Last night, it was the secret of the Universe.”

None of us were ever going to forget it, and much as we loved him, none of us were ever going to let him forget it, either.

I gathered a large wad of morning glory on my hoe and carried it to the compost bin, shook it off and rolled the bin ahead of us to a new location.

“Really, though, sometimes, when I’m working in the garden, when I’m on a roll in the work, I can feel it. I can feel Gaea telling me how she wants it to go, and I work with her, and it goes better.”

“For real?

“Definitely. I used to feel as though our garden’s plants were Gaea’s stepchildren, and she was never going to love them as much as her darling weeds, but if I negotiate with her, she likes them better, and they live better.”

“Well, you do keep the gardens better than anyone else.”

“Maybe it’s just a metaphor, the way Mom says her tools aren’t really alive, but she’s still going to apologize to them when she drops them, because if she treats them as though they have feelings, she gets better performance out of them. I don’t suppose it matters.”

“No, it doesn’t. And it makes more of a difference if we treat Gaea as if she were alive and has feelings.”

I gave a little sob.

“It sure does. God, I wish everyone did.”

I gathered up another wad of morning glory.

“C.S. Lewis,” I muttered.

“What about him?”

“Saying, ‘How can there be too many babies? Like saying there are too many flowers.’ Yes, there can be too many flowers!”

 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/556318

The Various Faces of the Moon

"You used to only see one face of it."

"That idea is really difficult to grasp. I'm so used to seeing all sides of it night after night."

"Yes, well, you're used to seeing it with water and plants on it, too."

"Heh, there is that. Sometimes I do imagine it: looking up and seeing it white and dead, like a skull, a rebuke to us of what we could be if we didn't take good care of our planet."

"Heh, I don't get the impression that one person in a million thought of it that way. Evidently most people thought of it as a very romantic sight."

"I've heard that, and I found it completely baffling. The stars I can understand, and fireflies, certainly, since it's a mating display by the insects themselves, but the dreary light of a lifeless Moon? I would think that the light of our own terraformed Moon, even though it's duller, would be more romantic, since it shows how much humans love life, that we'd spread it to a new world."

 

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "The 20th of July is an auspicious date on which to discuss the Moon."

Choir of One

 

“He really does have a beautiful singing voice, doesn’t he?” my wife said as Fly Me to the Moon ended.

“Who is it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s Vic Makropolus. Haven’t you ever heard him before?”

She picked up the CD case and handed it over to me. It was a fairly old-fashioned design, just a photo of a plain-looking man in an evening suit on an empty stage, under a spotlight. In white serifed letters above his head it said, IN CONCERT: VIC MAKROPOLUS.

The Impossible Dream began coming from the stereo. There was no denying he had a powerful, compelling voice. He had a strong, rich, baritone voice that was good to listen to.

“Yes. Yes, he’s good. Is he new?”

“He only started recording this year, as far as I know. I think this is his first album. He’s been popping up on my feeds, though.”

I read the text on the CD case. For some reason, the phrase “in concert” caught in my brain.

“Funny about that term, ‘in concert’. It implies more than one person singing, yet it’s normally applied to a single person singing.”

“You’re right. It’s like calling one person singing a chorus.”

“Although with pipes like his, this fellow is a choir of one.”

“You see why he impressed me.”

“Oh, indeed. He’s the kind who would have knocked ‘em dead in the old days, before amplification. Even now, a voice that strong stands out.”

He went into Nessun dorma. We fell silent. We had no choice.

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Listen."

The Questions You Might Want To Ask

 

“Hello, Amy, can you hear me?”

“Um…yes?”

“That’s good. My name is George, and I’m here to help you. Are you comfortable right now? Is my voice too loud or too soft, for instance?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m . . . very comfortable. In fact, I feel better than I can ever remember being in my life.”

“That’s good. That’s always our intention, but we don’t always get it right on the first try.”

“’What you mean, “we”, white man?’ Sorry, I need to learn to stop making that joke. Fewer people get it every year, and some people take offense at it-especially people of color. Anyway, who is ‘we’, please? You don’t look like hospital staff.”

“I’m not, but I am here to help. I can show you how to make adjustments to be more comfortable, and try to answer the questions you might want to ask.

“Oh, and by the way, I did get the joke, and I didn’t take offense. Also: the King sits on gold. Who sits on silver?”

“The Lone Ranger, of course.”

“You have a nice laugh, Amy.”

“You have a nice smile, George. Oh, my, I’m flirting with you – I must be feeling better. But: please tell me exactly what is going on here. Is this a room for some new therapy I haven’t been getting before, or so I just not remember it?”

“From now on, you shouldn’t have any trouble with memory. For instance: what did you have to drink while you read the first chapter of Mission of Gravity?”

“Peppermint tea – it was the only tea left in the house. Wow, I was fourteen years old on June 5^th, 1967!”

“There, your memory is intact. Everything’s fine.”

“So I’m in Heaven?”

“We don’t use that name, because it comes with some associations that aren’t helpful. But it isn’t Hell, either, so don’t-“

“Grandma? Sorry to wake you, but I brought the kids, and we can only stay for a little while.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Meesha. I was having a nice dream, but it’s one I’ve had a couple of times already.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I feel fine, but they warned me about that. If I hadn’t read up on it, I wouldn’t know: when you get right to the end, you have a baseless feeling of well-being. A lot of people become convinced they’re getting better, which can be really hard on the people trying to help them at the end, when they start babbling about all the things they’re about to start doing.”

“Are you at the end, Gran Amy?”

“Yes, Hali, it’s almost over, but that’s okay. It’s the end for me, but I’ve lived longer than most, and I’ve had the good fortune and the good sense to enjoy more than most, and I have this lovely feeling of well-being to help me at the finish. Also, I get to see you. That’s good. You’re going to live long after I’m done.”

“Are you going to go to Heaven and meet the angels?”

“It’s a pretty thought. Probably not, but I’m okay with that.”

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46701/questions-about-angels

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée."

The World Needs You

 

Gaea was holding out both hands imploringly, rather than Uncle Sam’s commanding finger in the “I Want You” poster, but this poster’s meaning was just as emphatic, and just as manipulative. It was a plea for young people to join the UNESCO reclamation service, to labor to preserve human habitat and what remained of animal habitat in areas suffering the worst of global warming.

I’d hung it in my classroom at the beginning of the school year more because I thought I’d enjoy seeing Gaea’s sad face in moments of abstraction than because I thought it would have any beneficial effect, but to my surprise over the course of the year several students had asked me about how to get in touch with UNESCO and what their requirements were. More surprising still, a couple of teachers had as well. I’d directed them all to the web site listed at the bottom of the poster.

Now, I was clearing out my things at the end of the school year, and I wasn’t going to be back in the Fall over what I considered to be a ridiculous misunderstanding, but which had tarnished my reputation seemingly beyond redemption. I looked at the poster and read the address at the bottom of the poster, looked up at Gaea’s sad, anxious face and said, “Okay, you got me.”

 

https://www.facebook.com/silvermoonshaman/posts/758775088115698

It Was After Dinner

 

I was washing the dishes, thinking over my options for the rest of the evening, when I was suddenly struck with an appalling feeling that I didn’t like any of them. That I hadn’t really liked any of my options for a very long time.

I felt an urge to drop the sponge in the sink and walk straight out the door, not even pause to put on my hat, just grab my pocketbook and go. Head on out and take off down the road and stop at a motel when I got tired, or just sleep in a field if I felt like it. Watch the Sun rise in a strange place and watch it set in a different one, just for the pleasure of seeing it happen. I wanted that.

I really did want that. Wanted it so badly that it scared me. I could barely feel the dishes in my hands as I continued to scrub them and rinse them, the blood was coursing through my arteries so hard.

I finished the dishes, just barely. Managed to get the last of them into the drying rack without any of them falling to the floor, somehow. But what was I going to do? I knew I couldn’t stay, no matter how much I loved my husband, I just couldn’t go on living in this house, going through these same motions day after day, any longer. I needed to get out and get moving.

I walked into the living room, and was slightly surprised to find my husband there. He was usually closed up in his study at this time of the evening, at work with his papers.

He put his arms around me and said, “Teddy, what do you say we close up the house for awhile and hit the road, just the two of us?”

I guess that’s why we’ve stayed together all these years: we can read each other’s moods so well, sometimes it’s downright eerie.

 

https://issuu.com/dolbychadwickgallery/docs/stay_inspired_single_pages

You Have Permission To Dance

 

I climbed off the table slowly and carefully.

“Are you in any pain?”

“I’m waiting for something to begin to hurt, but so far, nothing does. That’s miraculous, but also kind of…eerie, considering what I’ve been through. Not just the room full of gas that ate my skin off, but what I’ve been through for years before that. My knee doesn’t hurt, and it hurt for a long time.”

“We replaced a lot of things besides your skin and your lungs, yes.”

I ran a hand over my arm.

“By the way…am I always going to be this pink?”

“No. Your normal pigmentation should come back in a few months. Also your hair.”

I flexed and bent and reached.

“This really feels amazing. I feel like dancing.”

“You have permission to dance.”

I laughed, and executed an about-face, and then another, winding up facing him again. I dropped down into a squat and leapt up to touch the ceiling, then did begin actually dancing.

It felt good. So good.

 

https://www.altaredbygrief.com/blog

And Numberless Blades of Grass

 

The editor looked at the painting, which showed an astronaut walking toward a spaceship, with a trail of discarded objects behind him, representing parts of his life which he had discarded on his way towards his goal: a brightly-colored ball, a book of poetry, an Army rifle.

“I like it, but . . . put some grass on the ground, so it doesn’t look like just a Surrealist abstraction.”

I sputtered, “But it is a Surrealist abstraction!”

He glared at me.

“I hate Surrealism. Put some grass on it.”

I sighed, took the painting back, closed it in its cover and left. I took the train home, fuming, trying to concentrate on my book, thinking about grass.

Back at home, I set the painting on my easel and began adding grass to the painting. He wanted grass, okay, I’d give him grass. I painted blade after blade after blade, turning the elegant surreal landscape I had created into a grassy plain – which was plenty surreal itself, as I recalled from having crossed it hitchhiking years before. Man, there was a lot of it. A surreal amount, one might say.

I painted grass and I painted grass, first around the objects and the astronaut’s feet anf disturbed grass in a trail behind him. Then I spread the grass out to the sides, left and right, into the distance. Hours passed, and I painted grass until my hand ached, and I thought I might have permanently used up my brain’s grass-painting chemicals, but I painted me some grass.

I brought the painting in the next day. The editor liked it. He bought it. I was able to bring home a load of groceries, and pay the electric bill.

Grass….

 

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "It's work."

     https://madlyinlovewithlife.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/rabindranath-tagore-the-stream-of-life/                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Which Is Why We Have Songs Of Praise

 

"Life isn’t easy and straightforward. It’s full of challenges and difficulties. Trouble will come to us uninvited and without warning. Man is prone to trouble as sparks are to fly upward, and under much the same circumstances: as the result of invisible forces surrounding us. But it is precisely because life is like that, that we should choose to embrace it and be grateful for it. It is because life is a damn pain that we should be glad to experience it.

“A prisoner of war once looked down in disgust at the bowl of slop and weevil-infested crust in front of him, and then noticed his cellmate saying grace over it. He said, ‘You’d say grace over a meal like that?’ His comrade looked startled and said, ‘Yeah – thank God for that!’

“It is in that spirit that we should each of us embrace the problems we face and be glad for the opportunity to work through them. We should not merely accept and endure our flawed lives, but rejoice in them. That is why we have songs of praise for our life in this fallen world.”

 

The Magic Eight-Ball Says, "Because screaming all the time makes your throat hurt."

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2017/10/and-bob-dylan-too-poem-by-mary-oliver.html

My Son Is In The Hospital

When I answered the robocall, I wasn't sure whether the call saying "a family member" was hospitalized was genuine or not. Instead of calling the number provided, I looked up OHSU online. Yes, it was true. And it was Tes.

It's been three years since I've had direct confirmation that Tesfaye (Tes-FA-yah) Desta Burt was alive. My guess is, he's been on and off the streets in that time, probably in Portland, still unable to lead a normal life because of his schizophrenia, choosing to silence the voices he hears with alcohol rather than taking the medications prescribed for him. People had said that they thought they'd seen him, but this was the first time that legal authorities had confirmed his existence.

They confirmed that he'd been in and out of jail and hospitals in that time, and that while in jail on one occasion, he had been assaulted by another prisoner and had lost an eye, which reminded me of Oscar Wilde saying that if this was how Her Majesty treated her prisoners, she shouldn't be allowed to have any.

He'd been found unconscious on the street, having survived either a hit-and-run collision or an assault, with head injuries and a torn artery. His brain had suffered a shock and was not functioning normally. He was unable to walk, speak or sit up unassisted.

When I visited him the first time, he seemed to recognize me but was unable to speak. He could make a few seemingly random vocalizations that sounded more like speaking in tongues than actual language. He was also held in restraints to keep him from falling out of bed.

The next time, he was using single words correctly, and a few days later he was speaking in complete sentences. He was also able to get up and walk in the hallway. His restraints had been replaced by a mesh enclosure which allowed him freedom of movement within the bed but prevented him from falling or from taking off walking unescorted. It was only unzipped when there was someone in the room with him. He'd also begun feeding himself, although he was using his hands rather than utensils.

The plan is for him to go into a two-week intensive rehabilitation program once his body has made a sufficient recovery. Where he goes after that is problematic: each of his sisters lives in Portland, but neither of them can provide him with a room of his own, and each has a rambunctious three-year-old. He could come here, where there is more room and more quiet, but I tire quickly these days. I don't know what to do.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Reply hazy, ask again later. I hate this."

You Were Wild And Gentle

 

My lovely creatures, how I wish things had been easier for you. You came into this world at such a difficult time. We were in the middle of such a difficult period, trying to survive a crisis we had created in the planet’s biosphere through our own carelessness and selfishness, meddling with the germ plasm of hundreds of species for fun and profit, prodding the next planet over in a careless fashion without really committing ourselves to doing anything with it, and then you came along, and at first we didn’t really give you the attention you deserved.

We should have set firm priorities, put the climate first and you second, since in the latter case we owed it to you for having brought you into being, an intelligent species, and in the former case we owed it to both you and to ourselves. Instead we neglected both and the results are as we see them: the planet is reduced to this sadly diminished condition, our species is fallen to a fraction of its former population and survives only in pockets, either as miserable hunter-gatherers or as tiny enclaves who preserve the ancient technology but won’t for much longer, trying to share what we know with you, since you are in a better position to thrive in this world.

You were sweet and joyful creatures when we first met you. Much as we probably were when our own species was new. It seemed a shame to have to break into your innocence with knowledge of ecosystems and energy economies and invasive species, but we had to. We could see, as you proliferated in the world we could no longer survive in, that you were well on your way to re-creating the same blunders we had made.

Good luck, young ones. Take good care of this planet, and the new ones besides. Share Earth’s life with them, as we had hoped to.

 

https://poems.com/poem/night-on-the-island/

Let The Ripples Take Me

I wasn’t sure what had happened. One moment I had been in the middle of a loud, cheerful party, full of celebration and cheerful talk, and then I’d been in the middle of a dark, crowded scramble for escape-from what and to where, nobody was quite sure. I felt as though I were liable to be trampled in the press, even though I was a tall, heavily-built person who should have been able to command the people around me in an anxious moment like this, if I hadn’t been so timid.

I heard a voice call out across the mob. It was Mark Ripple, a man who was much less of an imposing figure than I was, but it was his yard we were standing in, and he was just married, which I suppose gave him more standing.

“Now come on, folks, calm down! The lights have gone out, that’s not big deal. We were planning to douse the lights for a bit of celestial entertainment anyway!”

People did gradually stop shoving one another quite so riotously. From the angle his voice seemed to be coming from, I had a feeling that he was standing on a table. A moment later, Mark’s bridegroom, Teddy Walker, who was now a Ripple also, became visible, carrying a peculiar-looking penlight which had a plastic cup stuck onto it so that its light illuminated it, making it look like a candle burning inside a cup. He handed it up to his husband and reached into the box under his arm and turned on another one and handed it to a guest nearby and spoke to her softly. She took the light and moved away through the crowd.

Gradually, the light spread, and the party became softly lit instead of dark.

 

The Magic Eight-Ball says: Phttps://condofire.com/2019/12/11/poem-of-the-week-canoe-by-alison-luterman-via-poetry-mistress-alison-mcghee/

A Goulash Stew

 

Jeremy pulled a bag of tomatoes out of the refrigerator and handed it to me.

“Cut these up into small bits, okay? Don’t put them in, um…put them in a bowl, so I can put them in later, you know?”

I took the bag over to the counter, took down a cutting board from where it leaned against the backsplash, and asked, “How many?”

“Um, cut up a couple and show me how much they make.”

He went back to the fridge, looking at what was in it. He cackled with delight and puled out the jar of pickled cocktail onions.

“Oh, Golly, I’ll have to put all of these in!”

“Oh, yeah! They’ll be, like, eyeballs!”

“I’ll put them in at the last minute, too, like the tomatoes.”

“Maybe it should just be a cold soup, like, uh…I forget what they call it, but there are some kinds of soup where they make it up cold, and don’t cook it at all”

Jeremy looked thoughtful. The “ghoul-ash” we were preparing for the Halloween party was going to be based mainly on V-8 juice and beef bouillon, so we knew it couldn’t be cooked very much anyway.

“Yeah, let’s. Cold soul will be kind of ghoulish by itself.”

The only thing we wound up cooking was a couple of chicken thighs that we boned and then baked and chopped up. We made a small pot of “Ghast-ash (Vegetarian)” to put on the buffet table as well, with no chicken and vegetable bouillon.

Prepping that meal in Jeremy’s mother’s kitchen turned out to be the happiest Halloween I ever had. Just before we finished, he kissed me. I hadn’t even been sure he liked me that much, or that he was even gay.

 

https://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/poetry/when-i-am-among-trees

[Because at the last minute, the host decided the poem about goulash was too much of a downer.]

The Intricate Pattern In The Years

 

“I’m always going back to foolish, embarrassing or shameful things I did long ago and dwelling on them endlessly, even if they’re things no-one but me remembers.”

“Ugh, I know just what you mean. I used to see a therapist who tried to turn that perversity of my memory back against itself, told me to invent false memories in which I did the right thing. I balked at the idea of intentionally falsifying my memories, I pointed out that I was hardly anything but the sum total of my memories, so if my memories were false, what was I? His counterargument was that since nobody but me remembered that moment, what was the harm in changing how I remembered it?”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, soon after I had to stop seeing him for completely unrelated reasons, but I think I would have had to stop seeing him on account of that issue. The idea of intentionally creating false memories, even if they were sitting in a drawer labelled ‘Comforting False Memories’, just kind of creeps me out.”

“I don’t know. I think we all have that drawer. I think we all fantasize about rewriting our past lives to make them come out better, even if it’s only through reading stories about people who have better childhoods or more successful college days than we do.”

“Well, maybe so. But there’s a point right there: when it’s a story about someone else’s life, it’s enough like your life that you can identify with the character, but it’s different enough from your own life that you’re not in danger of starting to believe that what happens to the character is what happened to you.”

“I’ve read stories in which people read overinflated hagiographic books about them and begin to believe that’s what happened to them.”

“Ohhh, that’s creepy.”

“Well, it’s usually played for laughs.”

“Yeah, but the sort of person who gets books like that written about them is usually someone in a position of power. So if, say, a combat veteran rides fame in war to political office, and comes to believe that his inflated heroism is real, his ego could run out of control, and lead to crazy risk-taking in Congress, or the White House. Creepy.”

“Good point. I also recall a story in which a General was constantly narrating everything he did in purple prose to a stenographer who hurriedly wrote it all down.”

“Eek.”

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Slowly, he tapped away at his keyboard...."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150045/the-gentle-art-of-shabby-dressing

Hopscotch and Jumprope

 

I walked out onto the playground, seeing the kids playing individually and in groups. The sawdust underfoot was frozen into a solid mass, the chunks on the surface frosted decoratively where they hadn’t been stepped on. The sky was a perfectly even gray, the Sun a white disk that you could look directly at. I imagined a flag, like the Japanese flag, but white on gray.

I looked around. A group of boys were throwing a football. I didn’t like football, or playing catch. Boys and girls were on the swings, but there weren’t any swings empty. The jungle gym was crowded. On the asphalt patch, groups of girls were playing hopscotch and jumprope and that weird game where one of them crouched down in the center and they formed a circle around her and sang a song while she stood up. Actually, maybe there was more than one game like that. I had a feeling I’d heard more than one song, anyway.

I didn’t like being on the asphalt during recess. I thought of playing on asphalt as an opportunity to fall down and tear your pants and gouge your hands. Still, I’d always wondered about the games girls played. I’d already learned that boys’ games were magic, and could take you to far-off places and allow you to live other lives, almost as well as books could, if you observed the rituals and didn’t mess with them. It was easy to mess up the magic, of course. What sort of magic did girls use, though? I decided I’d like to find out.

I walked over to where the girls were jumping rope. I saw that two girls were twirling the rope, and the girl in the middle was not watching for it – she was actually not facing towards it, and couldn’t see it coming. She was dancing in time to the rope’s swing, dancing with the rope, as its partner. So . . . .

I watched two girls playing Hopscotch. That was trickier, and finally I asked them to explain it. They were annoyed at being asked to explain, but tried to be polite. They even invited me to try it, but when I tossed the stick they were using, it landed outside of a square, and when I skipped down the squares, I didn’t land inside them, and wrong-footed, and didn’t understand their explanation of what I had done wrong, and went away annoyed.

I didn’t even try with the circle of singing girls.

And so I never did learn the secret of girl magic.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47247/in-just

On My Way To Yes

 

“Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?”

He bit his lip and stammered and finally smiled and said, “Well, clearly, Joe Biden is the President, so-”

“Please, that’s not what I asked you. The question is-”

“Look, he was sworn in on the 20^th of January, everybody saw it, so-.”

“Again, that’s not what I asked.”

“Are you trying to tangle me up in some kind of conspiracy theory?”

“With respect, Sir, I’m trying to disentangle you from a conspiracy theory. I’m asking you to formally renounce-.”

“Look, we all know who the President is, so can we move on from-”

“I’d really like to. So, can we settle the question: who won the 2020 election?”

“Look, the election is over and done with. Joe Biden was sworn in as President and that’s all finished, there’s no taking it back now.”

“But did Joe Biden win the 2020 election, yes or no?”

“I already told you he’s the President, what more do you want me to say? Can we move on?”

“We’re almost done here. The question is, who was the legitimate winner of the 2020-”

“What difference does it make who I think-”

“If you’re harboring secret reservations, I think it makes a great deal of difference in your ability to work with our President. So please give us an honest answer: is Joe Biden the legitimate winner of the 2020 election?

“Sir?

“Well, I think this is the first time a member of Congress has walked off our set in the middle of an interview. Coming up next . . . .”

 

https://www.seafarerpress.com/works/finally-on-my-way-to-yes

Bless This Land, From The Top Of Its Head To The Bottom Of Its Feet

 

I got up, early in the morning, before the rest of my family. I couldn’t tell time by the clock yet, but I could tell by the light that it was just after Sunrise, earlier than I usually got up. I put my hands to my chest and then spread them wide, as I’d seen people do in cartoons after rising in the morning. Yes, it did feel good to do that. I walked around the living room in my pajamas, wondering what I would do next.

I had a strange feeling, something I couldn’t remember having before, as though I ought to give a hug and a kiss to my brothers, and to Mommy and Daddy, and then to all of the neighbors, and then to everybody else in town, and then to everybody else in the country. I pictured myself reaching out with some kind of magic to touch all of those people and tell them I liked them all and they were good people and tell them to be good. I wanted to tell all of them they should be happy and not to cry. It was a strange feeling I had never had before.

My brother came in and found me sitting on the couch staring at the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“Ummm…I’m playing that I’m Santa Claus taking toys to everybody.”

“But you’re just sitting there.”

“I’m playing it inside my head.”     

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Have a good day. No, a really good day."

Toward a New Unknown

I walked into the Rexall and passed by shelves of products for conditions I had never had, or hoped never to have, or – I blushed – never could have – to the section of magazines. Here I had a similar problem: all of these magazines I had no use for, and among them the handful I had come in to look among.

Transorbital: last month’s, I already had it . . . Tales of Mystery and Imagination: already bought this issue, and shouldn’t have bothered – when will I learn? . . .  Contemplate: might buy it yet, if I get desperate – better decide quickly, there are only three copies left . . .Toward a New Unknown: that’s a new title, haven’t read it yet.

I pulled a copy of the first issue of Toward a New Unknown from the rack, trying to find one in perfect condition in case it might be worth money some day, paid my quarter for it and took it home. By the time I’d finished reading the stories in it, it was quite well-worn, of course, just like every other science fiction and fantasy magazine I bought when I was twelve, but that was all to the good. A book or magazine that came into my possession when I was twelve that wasn’t worn is one I didn’t read.

 

 

https://www.ststephensrva.org/download_file/view/1791/

Don't Show Your Breasts

 

It’s a nuisance, I know. You’d feel empowered and free, in the moment. You’d enjoy sharing that connection with another person that comes from sending a picture. And of course, you’re so certain that the person you’re sending it to will keep your picture secure, will never be careless with it, will never show it to anyone else, will never have a falling out with you, or if the two of you do have a falling out, will delete your pictures. Of course, you want that to be true. You presume, here and now, that it will be true. You can’t be certain that it will be true.

Remember that celebrities who can afford high-grade security on their images and their text files have had them stolen.

Even if you were to go the old-fashioned route, with hard copies, with Polaroids, those can be copied. Heck, they can be scanned on a printer and then boom, they’re on the Internet anyway.

In the fullness of time, this nonsense is going to run its course. There will come a day when every prominent woman in politics and the arts and letters has a bathroom selfie or a Mardi Gras photo or a beach shot, or if they don’t, they’ll have a deepfake that is so well done it’s difficult to plausibly deny. At that point, it really will be no big deal. Waving nude photos of someone will be a big so-what, and if they reflect badly on anyone, it will be on the clod who waves them around, just as it should be. But that day is not yet.

It’s a terrible shame, it’s a huge injustice, it absolutely shouldn’t be a big deal. I know all of that, but for the sake of your safety and peace of mind, I urge you most earnestly: don’t show your breasts.

 The Magic Eight-Ball says, "This isn't justice, it's just what is."

https://pollycastor.com/2018/10/05/be-a-lady-they-said-quote-by-camille-rainville

As The Legend Tells It

 

It can be frustrating- the way messy reality can turn into elegant legend so quickly. There is always the temptation to tweak events to fit into a narrative. Humans are story-telling creatures, and we see stories in human events the same way we see pictures in cracks in a ceiling.

But perhaps it’s better to go along with the legend. The saying is, when facts conflict with the legend, print the legend. This is usually cast as cynicism, to go with what sells, but perhaps it actually is better to inhabit the legend. What we call “objectivity” is just another way of interpreting events, after all – it could be that there is an advantage in taking a legendary approach, in saying, as Jung does, that even the most ordinary life is worthy of mythology, in casting every person as a character in an epic. Why not?

Why shouldn’t your marriage be one of the great loves of history? Why shouldn’t your country be a great nation, in ways that don’t do harm to its neighbors? What’s the harm in being a legend in your own mind?

 The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Yes, but actually...."

https://allpoetry.com/When-a-Woman-Feels-Alone

Some Words Are Messengers

 

“Did you hear about the new probe that’s just been launched toward Mercury?” I asked Ms. Messenger as I massaged the back of her thigh.

“No, I haven’t. I do usually follow news about space exploration, but I hadn’t heard about it. Who has launched it?”

“It was NASA. I thought you’d be interested, in particular, since its name is MESSENGER.”

“Hah. Well, that’s appropriate, for going to Mercury.”

“Just so. It’s an acronym, describing the kinds of instruments it’s going to be carrying, the things it’s going to be looking for. I forget what-all it’s doing. I believe one thing it will be doing is looking for ice.”

“Ice? Really?”

“Well, at the poles, in deep craters, there are shadowed places where the Sun never shines, so the temperature remains extremely low. Almost as cold as people imagined the back side of Mercury would be, when we thought it was tidally locked and always kept one face toward the Sun.”

I folded the sheet back over her leg and moved around to the head to fold it down to uncover her back. I tucked it into the waistband of her underpants to make sure they were protected and spread oil across her back.

“People thought that? I never heard that.”

“Yes, until the 1960s. The way the Moon is tidally locked to the Sun.”

“Whoa. If that happened, then the night side would never see the Sun at all…it would be so cold…whoa.”

“Yes. Colder than Pluto, which at least gets a tiny bit of Sunlight. It would be the coldest place in the Solar System.”

“Spooky.”

“I’d been meaning to ask you about your name. Do you know where it comes from?”

“I don’t. I only know my ancestry back about four generations, all in this country. I’ve been married twice, and kept it both times, because I couldn’t give it up.”

“Hey, if I married a woman named Messenger, I’d take her name.”

“Good for you.”

“Did you ever see that movie, The List of Adrian Messenger?”

“No, heard of it. That’s the one where a bunch of people turn out at the end to have been wearing heavy makeup to disguise themselves?”

“Yes. A weird gimmick. They didn’t quite have the technology to pull it off back then, you could pretty easily tell who the actors were, most of the time, but it was a fun movie anyway. One of those grisly murder comedies where a large number of people are killed in grotesque ways.”

“People are weird sometimes.”

I went on rubbing down her back.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91108/words-are-birds