A little past to season the present
"Is that the church of 'Popeye The Sailor Man'?" asked my musician friend. "It is, now," I replied, winking. I stopped wearing it when I returned to Michigan from Maryland, placing it on a 'reef' of polished stones. My efforts to settle in the Washington area faltered; I’d obviously reached the point of contemplating my path anew. I didn’t want to continue displaying the anchor without understanding what it means to me now.
It was brittle with heat and had preexisting cracks. Several shards had darkened edges from the seep of long-forgotten meals. My mind sprinted between memories of better times in my DC apartment, times when I felt capable and loved; I supported myself in a space of my own. I had specific career and romantic prospects, the outlines of a definite trajectory for what “should” happen. All was smashed.
I called truck #212221 'Desirae'. Google tells me this is a French name for "the one desired". I found a poster of Ray Lewis propped against a pump-canister in the back of the flat-faced Isuzu my manager assigned to me: perhaps a desire but even more a discovery. "I'll call you 'Rae-Rae'-- short for Desirae."… Continue reading Halloween Day: My Truck, My Tablet, and a Pink House
On Halloween Day I departed from the IHOP in Olney, MD in a daze. To lessen the likelihood of mowing-down trick-or-treaters with our fleet of half-blind utility trucks, our assigned work orders were lighter that day. I had spent the morning disguised as a lawn technician, and employed as one this past Autumn, but never shed… Continue reading Halloween Day: The Costumed Clerk and a Plastic Trumpet
I want to unpack this notion of "writing to live", presently. It cannot be a hollow, "just do it", reductionist-species of motivational phrase. This fresh axiom also needs separated from another, superficially-similar suggestion to "write like your life depends upon it." These two sentences come from different poetics. To write as if my entire life… Continue reading Write to Live: Musician’s Intuition
The ember in my core seeded my body, as if blue flames reached like trees from the stubble along my neck, spinal ridges, the crests of my shoulders. I am a land of fire, again relishing the sensation of burning as I stare into backyard flames -- flashing orange in the company of friends. I… Continue reading The Fires of June
Like a swarm of jellyfish afloat in a swell,
an uncountable glut of balloons offer
trailing threads of many colors and
rise away.
If I grab the blue string, will I need
to gather every thread of that hue
to succeed at blues? Or must I
make bundles of rainbow colors, yet
miss the bulbs of indigo I cannot see?
