____________________________
Tomorrow I will take up that heavy poem again -Robinson Jefers
The day you were born. Brenda the Midwife told me, “Don’t take your eyes off her. Make sure she breathes.” I sat all night, your tiny head in the palm of my hand, watching you breathe. I put my forehead to yours and you said, “I’ve come here to teach you that everything will be OK.” And you breathed.
Pandepic- Coping 19
Someone tell me what to do
Someone tell me what to do
Someone tell me what to do
Reality Breakdown -No Trend, Reality Breakdown
Reality
Break
Down
I always wanted to be around for the end of the world
pondered it
(then lusted after it… sshhh…)
in my teenage apocalyptic fantasies
Dystopian Daydreams in my mid-twenties before I clocked in at
9
and out at
5
A glorious
but brief
pause
between childhood
and
being crushed
something more
Something more
more than this
this
End Times promised more
a key to authentic life
Surely we will rise to the occasion, when the time came?
all our anarchic ambitions realized
Proven right!
Right?
Liberation beyond literature,
light
light
light
No light
No people
No speak
No people
No cars
No people
No food
No people
Stopped
Short
Grinding halt
Everything's coming to a grinding halt
The Cure ‘Grinding Halt’
Hmmm…
Now
Not so sure
It is kind of tough.
Brutal.
This hidden enemy.
the façade was always fragile
cracks spreading
for some ten thousand years
We knew the only thing keeping this facade plodding along
was faith in the future of the facade
and
the inability to see anything beyond it
________________
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
“Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.-TS Elliot
________________
Buying a burrito in April
typically and should be
a happy occasion.
Like waking up and realizing you are still alive.
Hey, my back is allowing me to put on my trousers without too much pain...
I have a job.
I'm healthy, my family is healthy.
I am about to make the best cup of coffee ever
to start my day.
The sun is out.
The burrito is a continuation of this.
Alas, yesterday it was a pretty sad burrito.
Don't get me wrong, it was delicious.
It was admittedly a pretty bourgeois burrito, seasonal vegetable, vegetarian on a whole wheat tortilla but it was sad for other reasons.
I asked the person who served me how business was going
the floodgates opened pretty quickly.
tanking business
children's struggles.
My quick take out burrito became a mini-counseling session
a chat.
a moment of deep and quick human connection over a burrito.
A very sad burrito
Sad is OK though.
________________
and there will be the most beautiful silence ever heard
born out of that
the sun still hidden there
awaiting the next chapter -Bukowski
_______________
When this is all said and done
I will never miss The Ex or Godspeedyoublackemperor
again
out of apathy
because there will be no apathy
apathy will be cancelled
blown ear drums
not apathy.
_______________________
This is the water
This is the well
Drink deep
and descend
The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within, Lynch, Twin Peaks
____________________
Even the most beautiful artists
has a bigcartel dot commerce
be consumed or consume
your well-being
through this
new normal
beer to your doorstep
swift sidewalk deals
hoot the amazon driver
praise UPS
(not USPS)
stealthy stimulus shopping
like internet connections
the economy
the economy
new emoji
___________________
These are the falling years.
They will go deep,
Never weep, never weep.
With clear eyes explore the pit.
Watch the great fall
With religious awe. Robison Jeffers
-
Will this alter the meaning of songs and poems
already written?
The diminished hum of traffic
the silent city
Pronounces the sirens
every time I open the back door
and as we obsess over stats and curves
I wonder if there is a need to hide us from
crimes popping off?
________________________________
I’ve worn masks for other reasons
but now it gives me anxiety
two-fold anxiety when I,
masked
try to communicate
with you,
masked
How about we break the ice
with a nice
Pint of Clorox?
And the great cities, Lord, what are they?
Places disintegrating and abandoned.
The city I know resembles animals fleeing from a fire.
The shelter it gave has no shelter now.
and the age of the cities is nearly over.
A child lives its growing years at a windowsill.
The shadow makes the same angle there each day.
It doesn’t realize that there are wild roses calling
to a day of open places, gaiety and wind.
It has to be a child and becomes a sad child. –Rainer Maria Rilke
_________________________
The number 19 is both a ‘starter’ and a ‘finisher’ if you care for numerology.
A number of surrender.
Maria Ortiz is 55 and dying. She is a 'ward of the state' and cannot communicate due to the advanced stages of her illness.
Her dying wish, to see the Pacific.
Simple enough, until Covid 19.
A little gap was found in the red tape
and
social workers and nurses made it happen.
She spent considerable time staring out to the horizon and listening to the waves.
This young man.
19.
Truly a beautiful mind.
The odds were stacked against him from day one.
But
a love of and incredible aptitude for science and mathematics got him through so much.
After his family gave up on him, he spent many months living in a dormitory with troubled men, decades older than him.
While he attempted to focus on physics,
someone might shit in his laundry
or attempt to steal his laptop.
After some time,
he gets into a living situation that is more age appropriate,
and soon gets himself enrolled in college.
His instructors tell him things like, "That was a flawless paper, I wish I could give you more than an A."
He benefits immensely from school, studies and structure.
Then Covid 19 hits.
His world,
like so many others falls apart in weeks.
No more classes.
What will the future look like?
Will I get Covid 19?
Wait...
Do I have Covid 19 right now?
He holes up in a small dark room with his terrible thoughts,
the paranoia sets in and
quickly consumes him.
He spirals.
His brain re-wires itself
in initially sad
but soon scary ways.
He hurts three people.
I can't explain why.
I thought he'd hurt himself before others,
but now he has traumatized three others.
He will likely go to prison.
He will likely get eaten alive before he turns twenty.
I reel.
I'm reeling.
It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ John Cleese as Brian Stimpson, Clockwise
_______________________________________________
While you were having trouble eating
George was having trouble breathing
A knee on the neck for hundreds of years
Cities burned before the forests
I sat watching the nurse rig you up to an IV drip while I was also trying to make sense of it all
You were the whole world to your mother
Yet, I couldn’t shut the rest of the world out during that moment.
You suffering just exacerbated it all
I began to burn
I returned home from the hospital
Drank about half a bottle of gin
Turned on the news
Turned on Godpseedyoublackemperor!
Put on a helmet,
goggles
N95
scarf
hoodie
And rode downtown.
One block from the Justice Center I rode through the barricade, toward the pounding rhythms of the drum corps.
A masochistic game unfolded
Chants
Rage
Projectiles
Fireworks
And then the retaliatory charge
arrests, beatings
Tear Gas
Tear Gas
Tear Gas
Running from a police charge,
I wondered if it was the gin or Tear Gas that was spinning me out
as I encountered an eight-foot fence between me and a safe exit.
I threw my bicycle over the fence
clambered over it.
now on my bike
cycling past
smashed windows
anti-police graffiti
clouds of tear gas wafting through the street screams, sirens, drums, debates, arguments, fights, chaos,
and pockets of calm
the fleeting cynic in me wondered who was there for?:
George Floyd
Breanna Taylor
Mike Brown
Rayshard Brooks
Daniel Prude Jnr
Atatiana Jefferson
Aura Rosser
Stephon Clark
Botham Jean
Philando castile
Alton Sterling
Michelle Cusseaux
Freddie gray
Janisha Fonville
Eric Garner
Akai Garley
Gabriiella Nevarez
Tamir Rice
Michael Brown
Tanisha Anderson
and
Patrick Kimmons
And who was there because they were not coping?
I’d worked with Patrick several times when he was a little boy.
Was I there for him then?
Was I there for him now?
Or was I there because I had had a skinful of booze and
was simply
not coping
with you being in hospital, for close to a week?
_______________________________________________
Be nice to each other
The Covid 19 Pandemic was a good reason to honor this
Be nice to each other
The murder of George Floyd was a good reason to honor this
Be Nice to Each other
Centuries of racial reckoning were good reasons to honor this
Be Nice to each other
The economic fall-out and massive numbers of unemployed were good reasons to honor this
Be Nice to each other
Increasing political polarization and subsequent deaths in our streets were good reasons to honor this
Be Nice to each other
The unprecedented wildfires
were good reasons to hone in on this.
The view from here.
The best you’ve seen.
But you know it is an ephemeral illusion.
And the reality that you will lose it,
Ends the moment.
_____________________________
Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in "final exam" as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe.
Buckminster Fuller, in Critical Path (1981)
____________________________
May the Flesh of Kings Feed The Earth
-Portland Graffiti
pandemic
social unrest
systemic racism
wildfires
political polarization
alienation
rapid deterioration of our individual and collective mental health
The root cause of all of this is the same
if we care to be honest with ourselves.
And the solution is not
Biden.
Don't just vote-
do something.
Or grab a beer
and go surfing
... fuck it...
William Burroughs wrote,
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide its basic mechanism.
John Zerzan later wrote,
Civilization is a conspiracy of noise designed to cover up the uncomfortable silences.
________________________________________________
“She will be fine but you need to go to the ER now.
Drive safely.
Do Not Speed.
She will be OK
But get to the ER. Now.
And Obey Traffic Laws.”
What have you done, sun and air?
Where have you gone, rock and stone.
Where are you going?
I will call Poison control and try to be your rock. I suppose I signed up for this.
You are almost everything to me.
Dunno dunno dunno
A few hundred MGs through a door I never wanted to open,
with a couple of shots of Vodka
and its Sylvia Plath poem
in the kitchen
during the early hours of a Saturday morning.
She knows she made a mistake.
At the ER
Covid Constrictions conspire to keep me contained
Only one of us can go back with her
Alone
Wondering
Charcoal Chomp?
Stomach suck?
I'm in the waiting room, I don't want the news
But I am not a patient boy
A teenage son wheels in his mother
She’s fucked up all right
Maybe more fucked up than my daughter
Someone tried to deliberately run her over
Bleeding ankle
Crushed leg
No hope left
“Get me my heat. Get me my Goddamned Heat.” She demands of her son.
“I’m going end it all right here. I’m going riot all up in this bitch. I’m going to get kicked out of this hospital also!”
“Mom, Mom, please stop talking, please.” Her tall teenage son bends over her wheelchair, pleading.
“Get me my fucking gun. I’m done. I can’t be here anymore.” She goes on.
I had wanted to continue to celebrate Trump’s Covid Diagnosis but instead and perhaps for the first time in well over a decade, the floodgates open and I surrender to an overwhelming rush of salty water.
Salt water. Sweat. Ocean. Tears.
Through it all
I want you to know,
that I saw you try to comfort your Mum
as she begged for her gun
“Where’s my my heat! Bring me my heat.”
Mom
Mom
Please
I saw you
hands in your hair
way beyond despair
being a man
as best you can
with the only tools
you had.
________________________
Swimming in smoke
Breathing in
charcoaled trees
CS gas
Covid droplets
Filtered through N95s
Once the air cleared
The first trip
back to the beach
was sensory overload
Help them breathe
and
Vaccinate me, please.
