Working on this very short story about grief. Enjoy:

It was twilight again and I was cleaning out my parents house.
In the dark garage was my father’s old convertible-an eggshell blue MG 1973-whose top was always down.
But I won’t clean that space today-too dusty I’m sure-not yet. I haven’t found the keys anyway.
I’ll play the records as I clean. I’ll catalogue which ones have scratches and exactly where in each song. That’s a good start.
My parents, at least they weren’t horders. That would be worse. Plus my boss said have the week off, until you feel success. Odd use of that word, I thought. How can one do this successfully anyway.
Well, there won’t be any alcohol, so I’ll have her bring some in the evening. Maybe we could sit on the porch and have a hot toddy, and listen to the least scratched albums…
But it’s probably all that big band crap or even tuba music. Still, I may find some jazz in the stacks somewhere, I pray.
What’s the right music to start the day? I’ll play mom’s favorite from that blind Italian jew. Yeah, that will set the tone. There’s implied hope at least in the fact that a blind man can sing like that!
The needle drops electric level releases the weight of the songs. And that tiny blue white gold light of glowing tubes glows again The old metal arm, with that glow play light illuminates the room. All those years, I never dared do anything but listen. Now I’m the DJ. It’s up to me to play these records, to see them through to the next generation or even eternity.
Twilight passes into that glow. And maybe we never know, what dust the sun must pass through to create such glory.
Maybe that’s why he always kept the top off that convertible . Fuck it, I think I’ll start in the garage after all.
Now, where are those keys.

We all
Have
Much deeper
Things to say
To one another
Than can be spoken
Today; still we pronounce
What can be said
Between us,
Until the whole
Sentence is
Eventually formed by faith
In that space
Of attempted
Silence
Which hourly
Passes between
Us.

//
In the dream
God would throw me objects
To juggle. Sometimes, they were
Just too much (kitchen sink, a puppy, a huge log), but
I kept catching them
And throwing them upwards.
Eventually He had Grace
And partially suspended gravity
So I could juggle
In slow motion
And experience the unbearable lightness of being…that is,
Until I felt
Accomplished enough
To at least
Entertain my own angels.

//
I made barbecue sauce today
The honey made it happier
That is, glad to be itself
Finally and shared with the world.

I’m sure God feels the same!

//
I wear lots of wrist watches
Started when I was young
I’m not trying to escape time
Just want to keep an eye on it
As I pass through. I mean my
Friends are all over the world
So having different moments than me.
I like to think of what part of day they are inside of
Encountering, as I meet our Father Time in mine.

//
Paris bridge
Man going to jump
Only art supplies
And a bible
In my pockets.
That, strangely
Seemed to have been
Enough. We exchanged names
And are friends to this day.

//
Meeting famous people-
Easy, if you see all people
As already immortal. Stardom here,
Is just a redundancy.

//
A Rhine of orange peel
In my honey today
Taught me Awe of zest again.

//
Why people chose
To mow in the heat of afternoon
Is a mystery of suffering to me.
But so is, the fact that it bothers me
So much.

//
As a kid in church:
Church steeples, how
A woman’s body moves when listening to heaven in prayer,
A wafer
A quake
And candy
During visitor’s welcome;
Not to mention rolling under pews
To try to get towards whatever
The preacher was really saying
To us all.
The sound of turning pages
And clinking of communion glasses
And the thought of lunch
Kept me seeking
And rolling on.

Wisdom

How deeply to engage
How much to know
Which doors to knock on softly
And which to break down with force
(Especially in people’s hearts). And, of course,
How to do both
In Love.
“A butterfly can break through
A window
At the right angle
And with precise timing.
I’m sure it’s the same
With doors,” she whispers
To me, gently.

//

We were in danger
Of becoming a thing
So, a few protested loudly
Vehemently against
The it-ing of human as machine.
While so,
On the other side
Of the world.
A Butterly lifted slowly
Off an orchid
Having drunk her
Fill of delight.

//

We are….

“The temple that can move and think and feel”

We are
Alive
Whether
We are born temples
Could be extraneous information
But that we
Are being built
Together as one
Seems
Overt
To me.
I pray today
To be
A doorknob
At least.

//
If all is immortal
Even before it was or is
Then this day
Should be unique.
At least your laughter
Should make us all
Glad, if even
Not fully aware
Of our happiness.

All real philosophies are best read
Through art.
All real artist are translators into the symbolic
Of what was already said in other words.

//
The problems of how to exist well
Have been with us for some time.
But that we exist and can consider it
Mutes non-being. Put in other words
The baby starts to speak after screaming.

//
Tiny cardinal bird
Fresh out and already alone
With one pink nearly red streak showing
On its tiny breast-
Chirps or rather beeps at me
As if I had always known his mother.

//
Wisdom

How deeply to engage
How much to know
Which doors to knock on softly
And which to break down with force
(Especially in people’s hearts). And, of course,
How to do both
In Love.
“A butterfly can break through
A window
At the right angle
And with precise timing.
I’m sure it’s the same
With doors,” she whispers
To me, gently.

Three I wrote today:

//

To make life burn,
You have to throw yourself in.
It will not meet you halfway—you leap
It catches. Only One
Comes knocking on your door at night
And that to say,
Tomorrow leap son
Leap as far and deep as you can see.
I’m here now, and I’ll be
Your landing soon enough!

//
Had a dream
I saw a hot air balloon trapped in telephone wires
As I could fly, I went up to help
The kids inside had been drinking and not even noticed
They were stuck in the electrical wires above.
Like tinker bell I slipped between wires
And pushed the balloon free.
The kids didn’t see me, but started applauding the sky
On the way back down I singed my leg on one of the wires.
Still have the scar of helping those kids get untangled.

//

“Just get drunk and mow the lawn”
My friend told me. “Makes it more sacred”.
As a kid I mowed lawns for a living
I sill have a method developed then.
It did not involve drinking, but thinking
Of the person I was mowing for
Like a mantra the whole time. I’ll stick with that way for now.

Not down
To the hot bar
Today
Even to play,
I’ve decided,
It’s simply too hot to live today or
To talk to friends
In the right way.
So I’ll write poems instead
And wait for the dread
Of forgetting everyone’s
Birthdays.
Maybe clean the barn
Or spin a yarn
Or something which doesn’t
Require the consequences
Of our mutual glories.

To my professors above, shrouded in love by now:

The cloud, now in glory, of witnesses-

You guys all still talk to me daily
As if you are still working from above–what’s up friends. Tell me what i need to know!

To mend it all into Glow!
Writing your books with more love now, I’m sure
To us who are still strangers in this land. Thanks for that. And more
That you want to keep guiding us while here, wherever we all are.
Just so you know, when you died,
I never felt an interruption in
Our talks together.
And what ongoing chatter and texts
You guys send!
I hear it within. And your humor

has gotten better and more needed now (whenever now is)

What a great rattle and joke you guys keep telling!

Keeping us alive, as you converse with us. And thanks

for letting us overhear your chatter! Like

old St John overheard His prayer rant-just before He went-

which must’ve saved us all

I’m sure.

You guys and gals are cool-

thanks for talking shit with me today,

as i’m sure we are all fools.

(In honor of all the writers who got judged after they died. To judge is to evaluate another’s worth…..may you evaluate as you would wish to be!)

Did something a little different today
Actually wrote, actually played, and noticed
Three new types of birds I did not know
In my neighborhood.
And the old lady tryin’ to get to her car next door.
Finally, got her name! At the same time,
Thought about old Flannery O’Connor dying so young
After barely starting to say what she was saying
(“Our most promising writer”, they said when she was alive)
To hum what she was humming under her breath
And choosing to bring it to light and speak it without fright.
That is to write.
And how, after death, everyone critiques you more-
How we presume to re-write another’s tombstone so blitely-
Because they couldn’t to your face. Thought of her face
The birds, death and writing, and all the stories we all really are inside.
Made me sigh with the baby cardinals, owls and these new strangers, and those others I don’t rightly
Know yet, but prayerfully will one day. Made me think of Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, and the other writers
I met who were, or turned out to be, what they seemed to be. At least to me.
Made me want to live on a peacock farm and take the risk of words, with
The prophet Amos, who wrote exactly what he saw, even, if later, others
saw it differently-or in his case, you might get killed by people who imagine themselves to be priest. That is, it made me want to be me.
And for that, I thank the Day-light on our words and writers- and those who shed light in play,
In dark times through words which keep causing trouble
For us all.
It’s easy to criticize the dead, and hard to love the living,
I suppose, but what if the judgement was just to take the risk
Of saying so. Be careful how you evaluate, your neighbor,
She might say. Even if they are just writing and staring at new birds all Day.
In the alleyways of the dead.
She was a priest and perhaps a prophet.
Be careful how you bury the prophets
Especially those who took the time to write it down for us.

Get good at death
Practice it each night you go to sleep
My mentor rattled.
When death becomes a teacher
Death dies and Life is all that is left.
And he said that, just before he died.

//

Two ways to practice death
Morbidly- means because you hated life all along.
That is to choose death as better than life.
The other way is this poem.
//

Some are attracted to death like perfume
Just wanting to get out of this life like a fly in a web-trapped.
On the way, they tear and burn tear and yearn to feel the contours
Of their skin’s exit. The shape of their torn wings. Others
Stand patiently with death at their end
And live facing a backwards in thanks for each hour…
Ticking like a Hebrew clock…
Teaching them to number their days.
Even calling some laughter
Their lives read backwards become a praise song.

//
Shadow of a woman contour on a church steeple

just below which,
Someone is crying and being baptized professionally
Preachers smacking the book

worship team waiting in the wings to escalate things…..
I’m shaking in my front row seat—something has entered me.
Something has come down from the baptistry
And chilled my skin like a ghost at a haunted house

or that character in Amelie who in mask breaths on his love’s neck in the fun house

before this,.
I saw backstage, where the mics, communion treys, cups for communion, props of sanctity-the glory was there too.

Usually at this part of the service, they break to welcome visitors-

as kids we would always find “the candy lady”

who gave us all gum, smarties…we knew where the treasure was; but

this day was different. Missionaries were speaking about Africa

and people being raised from the dead……
I met the broken missionaries
And looked into their eyes.
I saw all the shadows, and still do
chose only
The Light.

I chose even then The Candy Lady’s kisses and smarties!

But they had been sanctified into bread and wine that day!

//
Live as if dying today
Ikuri says
It’s terminal
Everything is terminal
And the terminal is Light.
//
Buber saw
Everything
As relational.
How deeply we relate
Is the temple of The Living God.
//
I don’t believe me
Even when I pray
But when I shut up
God only hears
My true word.
What I said
When I was sleeping,
That is.
//
I watched enough of that movie
To know it by heart. Some art
Is like that, enter at any point of the river
And know the whole thing.
Like when you meet a stranger
And know their whole story.
//
America says back
We are making money
And buying new cars. I’m writing mystical poetry
About corralling stars
As a kid on my chipped red
Rocking horse,
I said to her
I’m writing mystical poetry again
I don’t need a new house
I need to find the one I’m in
I am a house with many rooms
Some of which I’ve never entered.
And America says back
I’ll be back at 5
Dinner is in the microwave
I’m taking one of those AI driverless cars
To the gym, see you at ten.
Ok, I’ll be here writing mystical poetry
And corralling the stars by then dear.

//

When Frank died
They found poems everywhere.
On receipts, horse tickets
Ball game stubs, gum wrappers
Fish tackle boxes, book sleeves
The guy couldn’t not write it all down
They had to call in the linguistic team
To clean the mess, and edit it.

//
You have enough footage to last you
For eternity son. Thanks God.
And enough words to make a sea or two.
//

On the artist’s desire to make at least one piece which contains their whole being:

“Hope to find a work that will accommodate all which I have felt.”
We hope to make one whole statement.
Something which embodies and gives skin
To our best sightings, best thoughts, feels, instances, glimpses….
We want to make a whole animal which can walk around forever.
On it’s own two feet.
And to make and draw blood from words.

//

“Hopelessness is where sin settles.”

//
The old man
Had to
Get one of
Those driverless cars
Or manless as he calls them.
If you want to take away someone’s manhood
Make his car driverless.
//
The old man had to get one. He had watched them driving by his house overnight. Cars with no men in them, with cameras everywhere. These driverless AI cars had taken over his city.Some were scared, others curious, some bold one, interactive. At first he had hated them. “How emasculating!” He said to his wife.
But then the accident happened, and he still wanted to go to work in his own car. After all, he was American! And cars are a right. It’s in the constitution under some amendment I’m sure.
So he did it. Broke down and got one from the new local factory, who traded trees for Teslas.
Now his car parallel parks better than he did.
But now he shows up to work, with his head slightly lowered having perfectly parked for the first time in his life. He knew everyone could tell the difference. His car was a better driver than he had ever been.
And one has to work with that feeling.
//
The laws of relationships require love.

Unfinished dates:

The old man and retired tennis star were leaning in very close over some nachos and cheese from the local pub. It was their first date.
She asked him about his daughter.
“Well she married a nice Mexican man who can’t speak a lick of English, but best to them; I’ll be dead soon, and at least she’s moving forwards and happy, even though I know myself her Spanish is terrible. I mean, Que horrible!”
“She’s a good kid though, but got knocked up pretty early on, but the fellow seems to be a gentleman. They’ve been married 23 years by now.”
“And you, do you have kids?” He asked, savoring the jalapeño he had placed on the top of the cheese cheso.
“I’ve had great success in sports, but little in parenting.” She said, remarking that she had moved up north to escape the heat, but did miss this spicy cheso sauce they made in these parts.
“Yeah, they now have hundred of salsas down here at the market, he said.
“Some even made of cactus with peach or mango—whatever you want. Things have gotten sophisticated in the south.”
“I was about to leave myself, then my daughter got married and I got old. So decided to stay, and wait it out.”
“Where did you want to move to,” he asked, noticing them playing an old Waylon Jenning’s song.
“Scotland” he replied without thinking. That’s where my real family are from.
“Real family?” She asked.
“Yeah, the inlets of Scotland are filled with my blood.”
“Even down here, I just try to find things that remind me of, I guess what they would call, “the homeland of the heart”—that is if you wanna talk fancy. I just call it plain old nostalgia for someplace you know you came from, but can’t get back to.”
The waiter came and once again filled to the brim their enormous iced tea cups.
“No shortage of tea down here though!’ He ended his thought with.
“I’ve never been to Scotland she said, but did play a tournament in London once.”
“Is that right! You must’ve been. Big shot then.”
“Not at that point, I was just beginning. But it was amazing to see the churches and castles in that place as a young woman. Everything I’d hoped it would be really.”
“But then I had to come back and finish school, and learn to make a living in case tennis fell through.”
“Did it eventually fall through?”
Oh no, I thought it said on the dating app, I ended up being a champion for three years straight. Best in class. Brought short money, but I’m glad I finished my degree.”
What did you study?
The suffrage movement.
Oh.
The nachos ran out, so he turned to get the waiter’s attention.
“Could we get some more chips sir?”
“You bet!”
“Hey, where are you from, they don’t say-“you bet” down here.”
“Ha-I’m from the Canadian border sir, just going to school down here myself.”
“Is that right? What are you studying?”
Nuerology, but to be more specific genetic theory!
“Is that right, you must be pretty smart then, since I’m not even certain what that field entails?” He asked with slight curiousity, perhaps avoiding returning to the women’s suffrage conversation.
“Well, you’ll have to tell me about it sometime when you’re not working. I come in here all the time. I’m nearly regular.”
The waiter got another huge basket of chips piled in a red plastic bowl.
“They’ve been using these bowls since I was in college here, and that’s many moons ago.”
“When did you go to college?”
“Well I started three times, but when I finally went was 68. That’s when it took hold of me—you know knowledge and learning. Before then, I just saw it all as a way to make money or get a good job. What did you want to be when you grew up”, he added, a bit surprised he had.
“Well, you won’t believe this, but I wanted to be a priest, and since that wasn’t possible, a nun. But I quickly learned that neither were in my stars. I was good at tennis by age eight, and everyone said, It would be very unwise to head toward the church for any sort of reasonable career. And, I suppose they were right, but I always have wondered. I mean, I wouldn’t have made any money, but maybe I would have been something more like content. Don’t get me wrong, getting back to your question, I was able to put both my kids through university with no debt, and one’s a teacher and the other a film maker now; but I do wonder what a more monastic life would’ve been like.”
“That’s interesting, I never wanted to be a priest, but I did think of becoming an artist for a while. But it seemed as impractical as your priesthood dream. Just no real work in art, so I went for law. Even had my own firm for a while. I doodle these days from time to time, mostly flowers and birds, but a little abstract; even had a show of my work recently in a little local gallery; but I do at times wonder if I missed my calling. You said “content”-yeah, that’s a good word for what it feels like when I’m making art. I never felt content from law. But it was lucrative to be sure.”
They two had cleared nearly another half stack of nachos, when they both simultaneously decided to ask one another out on another date.