mother's day

today's my ma's birthday. she was born 72 years ago. she passed through 24-and-a-smidge years ago. seems in some ways like yesterday. hard to believe that anyone will be as important to me again. then i consider my yet-unborn children. we'll see...

i got this friend see

who's leavin town see. leavin the country see. leavin me see.

leavin is a wacky business. it's as unreal as it is real. leaving is an action, a state, a mindset, a thing that is as well as a thing that is not. leaving puts you in two places at the same time and also nowhere, in flux. it is the eternal present. it is a mix-up, an always, possibly maybe as bjork whinesings. it is a smile that tastes tears. it is waiting, it almost never was, it may never be. it is irrationality. total lack of linearity. no ricochet. no absolute. it is faith. it is in transit. it is has been wrapped around will be, the cling for dear life in a rather directed free fall into tabala rasa white space.

it is he. leaving me. the we that was will be something else entirely. would it be so if we had constructed space into something other than utterly foreign land -- each of its miles squashed next to each other, piled on top of each other like impossible mountain, sprawling ocean, crawling desert?

hard to say at the moment. i just know i'll miss him.

today

ooooooo if i hadda dartboard i'd start with the pictures of war mongers and work my way down to my next door neighbor who calls his son shit-eatin awful names.

modern man

if i were a man, what kind of man would i be.

i might be medium-tall with eyes. hard to tell what color. (all my brothers: brown or green. all my sisters: blue or hazel.) i would be a reader. and selectively athletic, quick and full of stamina. but this is the how not the what.

i would be the kind of man who looks people in the eye. i would try to refrain from slamming other lesser kids into lockers and later, i'd pay attention not to puff up to protect my ego. a real stud knows plain ol self-confidence is the best pheromone. laughing at self is a bonus; it adds inches to anything worth adding inches to >>wink<<. and i should hope i'd pay attention to my grooming. nails are important: skanky dirt in crevices...bad bad news. i would not be obsessed with balding; if or when it happens i'll handle it. but not at first. baby steps with that shit.

i'd get a little paunch at 40, 45. not a tire. a self-respecting paunch. 5 pounds. 10 max. i'll justify it by figurin i got the equivalent to my own personal set of d cups within reach at all times (that's about what my girlfriend's weigh anyway) - just a little lower on me and with some haywire distribution.

till then, i'd be very careful not to look too sloppy. i might not have the split calves and six pack of my youth but i do alright. feeling good in general helps.

i don't subscribe to any religion. grew out of it. besides, i'm too linear and rational for it, looking to prove my own way. but spirituality and self-awareness don't have to end in amen. i believe in the power of language and life example to affect change. i believe in the ultimate power of love. i've been called a good man, but i want to die a great man. it's difficult because it means remaining vigilant to my own bad habits, all the vices we let slide because we can. i wouldn't admit it often, i've broken a lot of rules, those i'd still break are made by men. those i'd rethink are made by women. probably mothers looking out to protect the rest of us good-fer-nuthins. and crazy as it sounds, i think i actually did learn almost everything i need to know by the time i was five. there are three golden rules besides the one golden rule: nude is better. friends forever. if you have to pay to get it, it may not be worth gettin. that last one has made me into a generous guy; it always comes back to me. don't get me wrong, though: mess with what's mine, you'll regret it. i didn't learn how to street fight for nuthin. i won't start it but if i have to, i'll finish it.

i have a hard time letting you have the last word, even if it means i sleep on the couch. a man's gotta swallow his pride from time to time but not at the expense of his ideals. somehow, though, i never sleep on the couch anymore. in the end, i'd rather be loved than right. it's been a hard lesson. and it's tough to say, anyway, how long right lasts. it changes on a dime or in a look.

manhood is hard to come by. but when you do it right, it awwwright. i thank my ma mostly. my dad, he provided the lines, i guess. i just had to color outside of em to find myself.

and yeah, i dabble with guitar. not because of the chics anymore. i just like it. it soothes and challenges me. it's like building a fire. i guess that's when i really feel like a man. sounds funny, but it's true. knowing i made that stupid roaring campfire. nothing like it. except maybe falling asleep with my baby. she loves me. plus, if my ma were alive, she'd dig her. necessary bonus.

turning japanese

how to make the sun rise*:

imagine a ladder-like thing small enough to fit in a 1-inch by 1-inch square of parchment (or paper--we're a modern society). black ink preferable. touch black tip to paper. stroke down. left side of ladder complete. stray about one half inch to your right. imagine the parallel line. same pen, stroke down. other ladder leg complete. to command a ladder, you must show its rungs. three rungs are enough: one bottomish: stroke. one middling: stroke. double check: both parallel parallel? the uppermost rung, reaching skyward on the left, slowly constant, rising rising. there. the sun.

now for rise: to the right of the sun, begin with a cross, how you imagine it, golgothic singular. talling and thin. pen to paper, make. now: a smidge up from the base, east to west, parallel with cross arms, your stroke. now, from the center of the cross where the trunk and arms are bound: down left, 45 degrees: swoop aaaaaaand barely up. not snapping up, but hesitating, a skirt hem stirring in a slow turn. a slight breeze. a slighter breeze. pen to center again. from the criss-cross, this time down right: 45 degrees, down down, past the east to west stroke at the foot, further, aaaaaaand a touch upward. not Up exactly. not a Line exactly, but a spin on a heel, a heavier breeze, one that lifts long heavy hair off the face, and up. rise.

sun rise. sunrise. the land of the rising sun.

*from the japanese

love

love is not what we think it is. and yet it is. it does not look as we expect it to look. and then it does. it does not do cartwheels for us so we kick it to the curb. shut up love, you suck we say. it crawls back to us but we don't see it crawl. we only see it standing in our way, dirty from the gutter and we wonder why it is so smelly and why is its shirt ripped. love, you are sort of dumb we say. get out of the way. and it refuses to cry in front of us. it stands there love. it stands there and looks at us until we turn right left. what are you looking at? stop looking at me that way. i won't stand for it. and love looks and love looks and love says nothing. or maybe it says stop being stupid. and so we smack love. we call it names and we say love, you are not love. you are dumb and by the way you are ugly too and i hate myself-- i mean i hate you. and love opens its arms but we don't see it until we're ready. love waits for us to look up. sometimes we don't look up. and love loses patience. (it's love not fantasy.) love has bills to pay and sleep to get and it gets so tired waiting for us to catch up and understand. and then we look up w a i t l o v e w a i t. and it slows its pace and picks up its left arm, stretches it back a little with its head bowed and waits for us to catch up and swing in beside its warm gate, left right left in unison.

till next time anyway.

thirsting and daydreaming

that's how i spend most of my days.
every once in a while i focus. hard. like laser.

and you?

something jen said

before i go to bed, something nice. i've heard too much of war today. 2-year-old women, 75-year-old girls, raped at unprecedented numbers in the congo. i can't take it. i can't take it. i can't take it.

but something jen said.

it reminds me of a poem a sculpture laid on us in a circle in a small room years ago. five years ago? maybe five years ago. in ypsilanti, michigan. in koho's old raggedy apartment. i brought town club pop. he brought bright eyes. new eyes. very very old eyes. soren was his name. soren the scupture. soren who won the lottery to come to the u.s. soren who wanted to paint and sculpt and forget that he had to live in this place to save his family. we didn't have shoes on. i told him, give a poem, soren. tell a story. c'mon. we're all doing it. now you. yeah yeah everybody said with smiles and laughs. sooooren they whined and laughed into their soda pop or wine glasses.

he was shy. he slouched against the wall like my elder sister's first boyfriend ronny. long arabic curls, brooding ronny. soren didn't brood. he...he...soren says my english is awful.

we'll help you i insist. so he begins by looking at my foot. i tuck it under me, make it invisible.

tell me he says.
if i were to catch you and kiss the
what is the word for soul? he asks.
soul we say.
no he says, the part of the foot the sole. sole we say.
no no he says my english is so terrible. i mean the center.
heart i tell him. do you mean heart?
yes he says. his eyes flash at mine. they bump against each other. i tuck mine in, make them littler, invisible. he looks down. he is shy.
i go again he says.

tell me he says
if i were to capture you and kiss the heart
of your foot
tell me
would you limp to save
my kiss

all night diner

tonight i took a friend to our first-ever detroit music awards.

enough about that.

by the end of the night a second and third friend had joined and i'd had two glasses of wine and no dinner.

enough about that.

when i was putting my coat on, in the middle of saying something very important (ha) over the din and the table to one friend, i got the sneaking suspicion the table behind me was laughing at something i had done. oh yes.

i had whapped a nice, seated, older gent right over the head with my spongy-squeezy-stretchy maroon scarf. imagine old man scrotum. that's what ellen calls it. (the scarf, not the gent.) anyway, if i were another woman in another situation, i could have been flirting or it could have been a feathery boa. but no. it was me. i was in mad story-telling conversation and i had created a tiny disaster, per usual, to embarrass myself and an old dude at the same time -- and end up having 8 to 10 people laughing where they used to be talking. "an adorable disaster" according to marco. yeah well. a mess anyway.

ended up i put my forehead on his arm and cracking up in apology. when i recovered, caught all the comments, took all the necessary ribs, i...yes...went back to the story while i tried to get my arm into the coat and...yuhuh...did it again.

this gave me pause. who doesthis kind of thing on a regular basis? anyway, there's nothing i can do. it follows me or, i find it. the answer was: get home before something else could happen.... get home and g e t me some d i n n e r.

threw some clothes in the wash and thought what i heard through the heating grates from the basement madly sloshing around were the jeans and t-shirts...turned out actually to be the eggs i put on the stove, right down the hallway, 14 minutes before. caught just in time. there was still some water leaping to save its own life, up and over the pot rim.

at any rate, got a helluva good-lookin cracked egg just waiting for me to devour. mm dinner. sometimes eating is a whole night's experience. knowwhatimean?

gettin some

gettin some sleep would be good. but first a note about the coolest bumper sticker i've seen in a long time. spotted on a saab 93 this afternoon in...well, it doesn't really matter where. the point is the sticker:

if you're not appalled
you haven't been paying attention

how on is that?!
yeah. white hot bright on.

no, you know what, it does matter where. it makes the sticker that much better.

texas.

truth is stranger than fiction. sometimes. usually when it's really bad. this time, however, we got lucky. it's when it's really good.

carsick but so what

got a headache from car sickness. don't know when i started getting it regularly, but i think it's one of those "old age" things that creep up and kick you square in the dingding. i used to be able to read hanging upsidedown from the car roof at 90 miles an hour around hairpin turns. now, however, ask me a question from the back seat and have me turn my head too fast from passenger window toward driver side and you're risking an issue of vomitous koleidescopes. what the hell happens to youth?

austin is weird. and the bumper stickers admit to as much. they DESIRE as much. "keep austin weird" they proclaim. cool eh? they like their dizziness. their befuddledness. their weirdness in the head is not pain. it's pleasure. too bad ann richards ain't in the picture no more. i have a feeling austin liked her.

i got a really nice complement (sp?) today from the prof i just finished my first intensive graduate seminar with. (has america decided yet if we can end sentnces with prepositions?) what a great class. and what great classmates. "You have a great deal to offer the profession of English studies," she says, "as well as the world of readers to whom you choose to write." isn't that great? her style had a lot to do with the quality of work coming out of us, i think. something about being progressive in a situation where you can be so much less. it's inspiring. it's like greta erlich wrote: "the world constantly invites us to be what we are." thinking about this, and taking my prof at her word, i discover regularly that this place (read: this care-starved planet) could really really use my assistance and my commitment.

i tell you, the longer i live the more i like wisening up. not losing my youth exactly...just gaining strength. appreciation. it's as deep and beautiful as a tiny ocean. and it's weird too. weird and wild enough to steep inside of once you find it. sortof like austin. and it's soothing enough, i think, even to get rid of this carsick headache.

supposed to

supposed to sit here in a chicago airport. waiting. supposed to pretend i can’t hear the crappy tv. god-awful night-time “news” programming. supposed to imagine i’m not freezing under forced air. (why can’t we open windows in this country?) supposed to ignore the cinnabons floating from over there to over here, where my nose is. normally i don’t even like those things, but somehow feeling a prisoner in a place makes you a prisoner to all of its assailants as well.

like in-flight to this place.

detroit to chicago is usually whisper quick. not tonight. i got stuck in the seat smashed between two characters. window side: a psychiatrist named mo. (“like moses, not like jesus,” he noted.) huh? on aisle side was no-name. i had a hard time with him because he showed up at all and booted me out of my preferred seat into the one next to mo (“like moses, not like jesus”).

supposed to be, seems to me, when someone has a pen in one hand and a packet of reading material in the other, her eyes downcast and concentration creasing the corners of her eyes, seems to me you’re supposed to assume she’s busy. and seems to me you’re suppose to, therefore, leave her... well...alone.

but no. take mo. mo, who kinda looked like a paperclip with a suit on – all hunkering and twisting skinny angles, and kinda acted like a dude with a very serious compulsion to dig through his bag. over and over and over again. and who had another compulsion to talk. quietly, barely audibly as a matter of fact, incessantly. unfortunately. to me.

interruption:
there is a smooth-faced, good-looking man sitting down the aisle from me in the airport. at the chicago-to-tulsa gate. he’s looking this way and it’s strange. as i type i’m facing him. people behave. do we notice how?

back to mo and no-name in the airplane on the way to this place:
chicago was sloooooooow in coming’s all i’ll say. then neighbor number two, who shared only a “hello” with me when he stole my preferred seat, told me “good luck with [insert topic one mo drilled me about] and [insert topic two mo drilled me about]. and have a good time in [insert eventual destination mo drilled me about].”

eavesdropper!

now kirsty alley is on tv... (“fat alley” says the tabloid tv show making fun of what the other tabloids call her. mind you, the topic of this tabloid news program is that exactly that same topic.) someone kill me.

if you sit long enough in an airport, you begin a study of people. do you know that when you look at someone, s/he knows it. they'll look back at you. they may not know who's looking at them, but they sense it. then again, you know that, don’t you.

isn't that why women, (usually from the (middle) east and other places americans tend to not talk or know so much about, have downcast eyes. looking means too much.

so my body temperature has fallen dramatically. (still under forced air.) and, based on my airport fashion poll, black shoes are de riguer in spring in chi-town. those -- or black leather jackets with flip flops. someone kill me again.

we’ve now reached the point where kirsty is a coke head. ope, moving on to scientology....

the cute guy is looking at me, which causes me to look up. i didn’t even realize he was looking at me. behavior. weird.

eew. who made white high heels fashionable. i hate them. maybe that means i should try on a buncha pairs. like therapy. go to the center of the pain. you know, like how i got over the affect of the word “cunt.” behavior. weird.

eesh, my flight is nearly ready for me. gotta scoot.

check ya soon, after kirsty gets through 1991 and on through to today. c’mon, kristy -- yoooou caaaan doooo iiiit!! ope. kirsty and parker: 9,000 square foot home, full time chef, fao schwartz...wealth is supposed to be heaven, right. poo. they divorce.... you know...supposed to don’t always cut it. but it sure seems good for prime time tv...

my friend just put on his coat. he’s on a mission. he’s at the airport, you know. goodbye, mr. bow-legs. people swarm around his seat but do not take it. the seat holds the memory of him, stays empty, until all the people who remember his sitting there move like cattle onto their planes bound for who-knows-where. then, it's tabala rasa. up for grabs. as if it were put on the earth this morning. and just for that new person. just for a little while.

behavior.

weird.

in less than a week i'll return

meanwhile:

www.100words.net.