Category Archives: people

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What is it? We don’t have it, something we don’t have.

The mystery the mercury the moistery the mastery. The wiggle room,

the where we ought to be. The shame of oughts the sin of noughts,

of nougats piled high and sickly sweet.

What are you, sweet or sweat? The giggle room, the pickle room,

the ambidextrous grace. Kids cannot find you,

longing longing for the kindness of your mercury.

Kids cannot find you, quicksilver. Not find nor chase you.

Not aligned.

And he is not aligned. Just at cross purposes,

and cross as well. Overarching cross and crass and

cress, the water crescents of belief. The ripple room.

Semantics, syntax. The sticky aftermath of wine,

here I am, table, table, table, table, baby.

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I can imagine river living, living by the river,

the Willamette where it winds through Creswell,

life between the buttes when there was so much

more to uncertainty than there is now.

Calling calling Colorado Gail, calling on my

dead ones, death, calling on the red ones,

milk red spots or stains, the blueberry of

buildings, the gray of grass, it dominates.

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Do you want me to come over there? He’s panting. He’s panting fabulous. She’s tan. She’s handicapped. She’s tand and handicapped. She’s Pat. She’s married. She’s forgotten. She is at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. She’s tarnished. She’s wilted. Wasted, warped. He’s warped, he’s disabled, he’s dyslexic. He’s young.

She talks so fast my head spins. Dizziness disease.

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this one wants to write through everything
this one wants pigtails
this one wants to be the age I am
this one wants disabilities and aches and pains
this one believes in happiness
the floral happiness
the petalled extras
the extravagance
the vagaries
the vacuum vengeance
the cosmic curiosities
the wretched
there are unawakened
there are emotional storms

Ralph’s sadness and his brave front
how do you like your brave front now

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jangling, the music is loud, Tina Turner, Dougie, favorite character, sitting in the corner mumbling, guy with tattoo of an axe on his forearm, sketching, someone like Blair maybe—I get tired. I get tired. Hey g’bye. Dougie says. Leave the poor guy alone. She shoots for Christianity. She is a tiny girl, a tiney angel, with tan skin, dark hair, named Angel. Everyone knows Doug. How’s your bike runnin’, Dougie, good? Here I am with characters. Still Life with Characters. Different bike from the last one he had. Everyone seems friendly. Hesitation. No No No. Dougie, Mario, Jim.

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who knows there are so many of them
trying to impress a dorky blend
compassion insight and the mere awareness

here it’s murky there is lots of black
occasional pashmina tight shirts walking skirts
and colored personal skin that’s very vague
and expletive with panty lines—sigh—
let’s all uncover it—
that one is pregnant and
two boys go by on roller shoes…

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and another difficulty walking pin stripe
squares with red tie classical you should be
retired tired tie and all
your silky light hair disarrayed and
off to work you go with stiffness and concern

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Learning to resolve, learning to dissolve, distort, depress, the discouragement of your name, learning about tanned skin, catalogs, and scans. How the coffee machine works, where you stand up where you stall where to stand up where to stall, how far to go, considering you are a hairy white man chubby belly straining plaid with ear phones and bewildered eyes—

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Shock of Ron Ferguson’s reference to Gail Godwin’s novel what it was. About coalescing, coming together and apart, Monrad and Rob in trouble, what about Joe, what about Warren?

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may 29, 2007

Hot page cool breeze. Birds and juice. Death in the air, creeping. Suicidal Ideation. Nothing but pleasantries, a need to scan the lines. Rustle woods, the deer step, squirrel shuffle. Peculiar disconnectedness of individuals, editors, the edited smile, the censored speech. Pileup of phrases. The litter of prepositions, the punctuation of punctuation. Texture of voices and air conditioning noises. The bands and patterns of tension. Often I ask: what are you talking about? What does it mean, the transfer function?

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Try to be direct, try to direct, the team, the leadership. The common, the committee, the approach, the aftermath. Amazed. I am amazed in grass in weeds in yard work. The root, the colors, the shapes, the tiny “M”, the way things are happening. A tiny phone in a tiny hole. Rhythmic remarks. The tiny mags, the page turners.

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Some things I don’t have room for. Titles. Organizational structures. Some things I have a talent for. Some men are women, some women are men. I have my own clients now. I’m managing the project. This is my practice. Practice management system. What is manageable, what is unmanageable. What is your sentence? Linda saying. Job interview. I will ask you a hard question. Your job is to ask the hard questions. Change management. This and that. When are we on the same page.

Com mun i ca tion
Se man tics

It’s not just semantics. I will blurt. I will micromanage. I will be an addict. I will repeat the question. I will get the job done. Please.

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A flicker in my toe. The obnoxiousness of writing the seethrough sheer. The obnoxiousness of writing, the impulsiveness. The retardedness. Someone has to be you and you are IT. Someone has to name the fashionable names. Someone has to translate. Someone has to have the skills. Someone has to be unresponsive. Someone has to serve the lunch, someone has to struggle in the office with a flicker in their left third toe and a stabbing pricker in their pinky and that one is me.

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Misconceptions. A tension from upper back through neck and into head.

A sick daring causing stomachache

a slight—what sort of slight

naming what is “hard” obscuring what is “soft” or “easy”

Some problem with the order—where are the 30—were there 30 or not?

honking, rapid, repetitive

see ya later and I got the door

salad for here

sometimes best to disappear

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Girls as big as horses, reminiscent hooves of shoes, long hair like manes sleek with exercise.

What business are you in?

Every movement seems audacious. Basic rule: to think, to work, invent.

Dave and Heidi. Julie and her baby.

Conestoga.

Mental flexibility is so important.

Just to let you know.

issues with travel come up when other people are doing it

the day your son gets a passport

the day a friend misinterprets

the horsey women leave and so do the foxy women and the blondes

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may 3, 2007

Adorable. He’s adorable, the way he curls his toes in, snuggles. The poetic journal, contentment of those “I’s” that misarticulation. I posted indirection on my website. Someone said “I don’t know what this poem means to me.” Wouldn’t that be me?

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Longing for the quiet of the bustling morning shops. In the small town, does anyone arise before 6? In the village, do you encounter people on the street? In the English village, naked people with monstrous faces? In the white north, chanting lunatics? In the humid south, alligators are successful, polar bears are not. Difficulties among the animal populations.

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This morning I listened to stories about the golden carp. And stories about stories. And resistance to the fact of stories. And the sources of stories. Beyond. All I can tell you.

You enters shyly. You has been driven away, off the mountain path. You has flown over the cliff in a blaze of herbal fire and lifting smoke. I feel your cloud on my arms. I feel cold leaching down my arms. I feel devils on my arms, in my hands. I feel dust coming up, dust and ash, clouds of smoke from the charnel grounds.

Her laughter—can’t kill herself because her son would then have to kill himself. I listen and might be tempted to be afraid, temptation to be afraid, mentally ill like everyone one. Everyone one.

So here we go—

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And yesterday or last week I heard about a service, body washing. Washing the body. I want my body tenderly washed by my faith community. Nothing more beautiful than that. And here I chatted about inconsequences with co-workers and Margaret’s family, while her mother lay in state. I thought—at least there should be silence. We are so bereft. And Poland—what happens when you lose 3 million Jews?

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No one’s here. Loud sound far away, a fog horn, some emergency of rain. Sam went out on a call about a flooded basement. Last night we ate at Pepe’s, the original tomato pie, no cheese. And hear the cheeping, the continuous chirping of suburban birds, and what is their mental capacity, and how do they stay warm? I want the angel of bird feathers and down to clothe me. I want the tendency to sing and fly. Their lives pass cheaply, no funerals at their deaths. No funerals, no funerals.

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Fast talkers. At work, an impulse, so intense, to slow down all conversations. Slow slow slow slow down. Make you repeat each word in line so the thoughts can be absorbed. So what is this phenomenon, this riffing disrespect? Does it hide ignorance or escalate frustration? Where is the mountain, where are the waters?

Egg looking for the riverbank. Eggplant seeking streamside.

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Chikeola sits there African and deep black and inhumanly strong and flexible. She touches my back, my hands, my feet, guides my elbows into microbends. Thoughts cross my mind—I’m 50, no I’m 51—and this is pretty good, right? Well no, she wouldn’t buy that, would she.

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More reading, more writing. Right now my skin is salty with dried sweat, I’m jittery with coffee. There is no torpor. I am radiant in the fragility of March. The fleeting ice, the flavors in the atmosphere, the thin glittering legs of these lake birds, hunting, hunting. Fish? Wishing for a lot of frogs around the edges of my pond, wishing for a pond. My parents’ relationship with the spring peepers in their backyard swamp. Yes, I have boredom, ill will, yes, and guess what—it is mine. I saw and felt that here just now. How latent it remains, the tendency to blame. Here I am warm and contained, my teeth are singing off the fluid line of ink. The failbetter, the magazine. Lists of objects. A book, over-sized, with heavy plastic pages, inscribed (somehow) with freewrites. I feel breathless.

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Ovoid aftermath
smug somethings of her afterbirth
no stories please
especially no photos
I can’t bear it
thinking of her
trying to breastfeed
little ones failing to thrive
on the diet of America
perpetuated
how could she rise above
how could she contemplate
the fingertips of
Else Lasker-Schüler

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Why struggle with this at all? I am insecure with anything that requires any level of resolve.

I can work a Program, show up, practice feebly on and off—I can read and write and work on software engineering. Fitness is not part of my routine. I’d let Sam work on his truck, the house, the computer, I’d let anyone do anything. There is very little I can figure out.

Holding Separate—here is where we are reckless holding ourself Separate—because there is a lack of dharma friends.

K—Starbucks and her husband—Burger King.

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Here are characters—Chikeola, the African Queen whose body bending like a snake gets up to chant Gayatri mantra—

There is handwriting on the wall in this location.

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march 14, 2007

Unashamed evaluation. Here in Starbucks, tears behind my eyes unreasonable. Feel pressure to make phone calls—Kristin, Lorna, Margaret, and I don’t want to do it. Feel the competition of Stamford, everyone is out. Feel a freaky drama starting in the house, so tied down, so unhappy, so oppressed, so much by what who knows the lack of private time, the restriction on my inner life my meditation my suffering over inability to recharge? Yes, I am an aging Ipod mini battery so

Thirsty and so suffering—it’s been coming up for hours, weeks, and months—I put it down (PUT IT DOWN) you see and there it is again this vagueness this unease the only solution that I want

Luckily no tears—K stopped by to say hi—my friend—oh well.

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At the next table, the woman drones into her cell phone in a monotone. Sad face and sad words. Manicure. Hairstyle. Family. You know, what am I getting in return? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And maybe expecting something is my problem. I just thought things were going to be a lot different. … skiing with Megan…

Vague wish to go skiing.

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A need to relax the mind, heal the interaction. She is a poet. He is dressed in second-hand clothes. She resists friendship, the contaminant of it. He is studying in the hot, in the cold. She is working on images not words. He is dreaming of the garden. She is assembling her questions into a marble monument, he is handling rotten fruit and leaves.

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50 x 365—unique work. I don’t know. I’m exhausted by it. I want it to be over. It is a huge meditation on interpersonal relations. I tried to exercise lovingkindness—could not succeed at times. I don’t know how much to reveal. I’d like to WOW people with it. That’s not such great motivation. I’d like to let people know they have touched my life. I’d like to open the door to an intimacy—but this is not very mutual. I grabbed all the power and authority by writing these things.

I found a source of motivation. I was not going to let D see me stop. Ha.

It’s not that big a thing really.