Three Dogs

You better cover it up before they get here.

Three dogs showed me just how it can finally happen.

Today I believed the influence of my surrounding.

You've lost perspective

I felt like a parent interrupting a room of children. How their eyes anticipated me leaving. "Close the door so we can get back to having fun." 

When I think I found just the right angle I haven't. When I feel like I'm included in my life, the author tells me to get lost. "See this page you wrote...I'm ripping it up."

Thick curtains block my mind when I try too hard.

Fly by your fabric and if it breaks, enjoy it, because you are finally falling.

Slack Lee told me, "Here are the stars. Now don't drop them."

I saw a few with great big nets walking towards giant clouds.

I started work in the mine today. It was dark and black but the men were full with America. 

Release

She was sticky tape residue from an IV worn too long.

See you on the other side

We are doing a lot of leaving today.

My feet did little but my body made it home.

When the clouds leave the sky alone.

It's Monday. A truck stops. The man tells me to climb in. I stare at him, then at the exhaust blowing dust off the pavement. He motions to climb in. I don't. I watch him drive away. 


Sometimes you have to stir your insides.


How you stared.


"Mom, the car is really thirsty today."
                                               -child

We have all gone missing

The last time I felt it I was in Chicago. I had made it through the tourist traps to the end of the pier, snapped a photo of the skyline and was on my way back to land when my phone vibrated. After reading the caller ID I wanted to ignore it. Put it back in your pocket and it will go away.

"Hello."

I had to sit down knowing my body was about to shut down. There was a black bench. It's expanded metal felt odd against my back as everything went blurry. Blink. You better blink or your eyes will dry out. lf only the people walking past me knew they were blurry peripherals.

Help!  My mind said out loud to them but only I herd it. They can't help. They are strangers. 

Find me while my soul is screaming. Take me in your arms and tell me your here. Open my head and take out my branches. Touch my leaves. Feel thier vibration. How you will understand me and I will understand you.

From a distance

We sped through desert coverd night where persuit was hapiness. 

My truck in the yard, on this hill, in this place we hoped to never find. 

Their fantasies' lit our muse like light turned on deep shadow. In the end, everyone failed.

I kept my self company last night.

My thread broke today.

Are we part of nostalgia. 

cac·o·e·thes

noun

        1. An irresistible urge to do something inadvisable.

We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit of the times,        and write up to it too, if that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are       nought.

                                                     -- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

Clarity

Superglue it together and maybe we'll finally see.

Brendan Keenan

I squatted next to an older man sitting on a cobble stone sidewalk collecting change in a stalking cap. 

Do you know of a place where I can get a really authentic Irish meal?

He said nothing, just stared into my eyes. In that moment I realized why the eyes are the window to the soul. They are the only part of our exterior that reflects how young we feel inside. His bright blues eyes reminded me of mine. They could have been the eyes of a young child; free of the wrinkles that gathered on his face and free of the gray that scattered through his hair. In less than a second I felt like we were sharing a common moment. I was looking into the mirror of my future and he was looking into the mirror of his past. Where is the time going? 


I became a bit uncomfortable with the silence and he noticed it. 

"Are you nervous?"

"No."

"You look a bit nervous."

I swallowed hard as I realized what I had just done. I had asked a man who eats off the streets if he could point me in the direction of a really good restaurant. He must be taking this as an insult, I thought. I really hoped he saw my innocence. The tension was strong and I was relieved he finally broke it. 

"Where ya in from?"

"The US."

"I know you're a Yank but that's not what I asked."


I scanned his eyes that were still locked on mine. 

"Most recently Paris."

"How did you like Paris?"


I felt like he already knew my answer. 

"The people were cold."

He looked across the people pushing through Temple Bar, then picked up his wood flute and played a familiar song that I finally recognized as, Battle Hymn of the Republic. He licked his lips, lowered his flute and looked back into my eyes. 


"I've been there."
"What did you think of it?"

"I like the way the leaves feel when I kick through the fall."

I smiled, letting his words settle in.


Above us was a gigantic spinning ice cream cone; it's electric motor rattling it's plastic exo-skellton at tourists in the square. For a moment I felt like I was in America. I broke from it's trance and looked back at his blue eyes. 

"You're quite the master on that flute."

"Thank you."

He played something more Irish. As he played I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Temple Bar before electricity. 

"Where did you learn to play?"

He laughed to himself as if to recall a hundred moments at once. 

"My daddy taught me to play flute and me brother to play pipes."

"Bag pipes?"

"Yeah, he taught me and Paddy ten songs and took us on the road with him."

"Was that when you went to Paris?"

"No, after Daddy died Paddy and I kept on."

"You toured?"

"We took off fast, started playing to huge crowds: London, Paris, Dublin, Belfast, Chicago, San Francisco..."

Suddenly my mirror to the future felt very heavy. How had he gone from there to here -- asleep on the street. 

He reached his hand out to me.

"Brendan Keenan."

I shook it.

"Ben La Marca."

That's when I noticed the ring on his finger. 

"Are you married?"

I gave him a inquisitive look.


"Til death do we part."


I stayed silent.

He picked up his flute and let out a long-slow breath. 

"She left ten years ago after we put me mother in the ground. Haven't seen her since. It was warm. Like today. But the sky was... "

He licked his lips and played a song.  

Brendan Keenan's brother, Paddy, is one of the most respected Pipers to come out of Ireland, maybe the world. 

It's a 3am morning and I'm running on yesterday's sleep.

There is a man in the house next to me who stares at the wall. I opened the window, crossed the grass,   walked through his garage and climbed into his head and all I found was a leather glove.

I saw a man in strong gallup through red canyons. He kept that pace until I woke. I opened my eyes to a poster of Michael Jordan.

The leaves surrendered today, finally changing into the colors of the sun as if to say thank you for giving us life.




In the ever expanding spaces of our mind may we always drift to the places where we stood between both sides of our self. 

Fall

In their deep greens the leaves refused to acknowlege it was the first day of fall.  Strong was their unwillingness to give summer the recognition it deserves. How it kept them warm for so long. 

Routine is the survival tactic we have deployed to maintain all of this.  When a new experience threatens us we flag it, file it away and tend to avoid it. But the the better question is, why mow the lawn in the first place?

Label it, categorize it, and make sure it gets on that shelf for safe keeping. 

When I rise in the morning I grab the device for a summarization of the world as it was written yesterday.

To blame dull human interactions on machines is to undermine the brilliance of the human spirit but life before electricity must have made me tremedoulsy curios.

This place is an ear for me. I've never been good to words so I put them here.