better

better than blogging - the snow is finally coming down, daughter home from school early not even 2pm, she out there making snow angels running around in the thick flurries of big puffer flakes and shes calling out to me to come out. No brainer, see ya later no offense but long after I am not here anymore what I do with her with her will still be cool. There are me ol' boots here somewhere....

there was this texaco

There was this guy and his wife. They ran a Texaco service station in town. Their home was just behind the pumps and a two bay garage. Sometimes they'd sell Joey and me tickets when they weren't going, face value box seat season holders since before the monuments. One of them would always pump the gas, no self service in those days, check under the hood? Checked the oil, front left looks a little low why don't you drive over? We'll fill it. We were just seventeen or eighteen, both of them were white haired and not yet feeble. But  his face and neck had been corkscrewed pinks and reds. And one of his hands, pearl wax white wrung out like rubber a glove still twisted. One day we asked her and she explained someone had pulled in for a fill up, tossed a lit cigarette while he was pumping. They used to have perfect triangle pine trees at either end of the house and across the street instead of a highway was the entrance to an eighty acre city park, fountains, formal rose gardens, small stone bridges arched over clear running streams. Years later another town another Texaco full service or self. Used to get my truck worked on, watched while I'd wait, his little girl and boy playing around in the driveway sometimes ride their tricycles. Now its a Mobil station and you can still get gas, no choice but to pump it your self and if you want; hot dogs, tacos, donuts, newspapers, coffee, lotto, butter, milk, eggs and you can still get a pack of Marlboro if you want to. And if any kid played in the drive way now? They'd probably get run over. Back in the day when I first met this girl she told me about how she and a friend had plans for robbing a gas station. A full service Texaco, this one on the way out of town, run by an old fellow plenty of cash from travelers to New Haven. He was really old and lived in a trailer behind the pumps stayed open 'til after dark. I'm certain I talked her out of it, we talked of other things instead like getting married and living without our families, she became my first wife and as they say one mans saving is another mans hell or I guess you'd have to say purgatory

primary yellow pad

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Soft snow

Soft snow swept easily from the car drive now through inches roads not yet plowed. Stevies on the radio, Nicks and Wonder; Too High, On The edge Of Seventeen. My cousin like a white dove drove a black trick paint Thunderbird or was it a Camero before she had babies, before she ended up alone some back woods Michigan wilderness and at the time I morassed in my own wilderness unable to help. Surprised when she told me her mother just died, cancer like my mother but so unlike my mother a darker version by necessity. I take the roads over narrow bridges through wood roads some paved some not, no one else for company, this hour of daylight only for me. Wondering why seven years later I think of her, what were the kids names? what ever happened next? As if I forgot about her 'til now as if not forgetting her but those seven years and I'm just going to call her back today like a promise once made kept. After the funeral of my mother, we took a walk up through another pine wood sat by the lake side, she wanting to be supportive, wanting to help me with her own sadness and so we blew a joint and so we kissed once maybe twice never again and I always thought she'd somehow make it, Trans Am floored Stevie blared something sky rocketry perpetual youth plugged into a dynamic different than the dictates of our families.

In my dream

In my dream we're in the car. I'm driving but we're going so fast over the roller-coaster bump that we end up airborne. I call feel it in my stomach when we stop from rising and start to fall and the car flips over. I remember thinking - I hope we turn over one more time before we land. Isn't that often the way it is. hope for a thing to happen a certain way even though theres no reason for it to. Hope none the less because after all it might. Yesterday walked in a "new" cemetery. Did my half hour among revolutionary soldiers, immigrants Polish Italian Irish veterans revolutionary,civil war,WWI, WWII Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, believers in peace, pursuers of peace, may they all be rested in peace. There were Pollard's and McGarr's, names form my fathers mother. There were stone wall still puzzled neatly together and leafless trees, borders of deep New England open fields and a February sun so bright could not help envy this place of rest. If only we could alive have such space and simply still, soak up this whole moment with every sense with nothing concepted, expected or even reflected. I sat with a nine year old child - 1920 - 1929 Kathyrn M. Sherman. White stone octagon on edge. Place a tiny sea shell and a stone of sugar golden mica for her. Sat on the ground back against an old maple watching chipmunks fearless keepers of her company flit and flitter around us sometimes stopping mere inches from where I sat. I will never know how she died, how close she was to being nine or what the M. stood for. But I told her story about the wave and the ocean. You know how the wave that thinks it is only a wave and fears the breaking shore yet the ocean that the wave truly is never breaks. That while the ocean is sometimes the wave, the wave is always the ocean, it is ocean that is the true nature of the wave; except when I told her it was more like ocean spoke than wave wrote.

I'm sure

I'm sure not the last morning wishing to stay in bed til noon. Sometimes Feng Shui works against you - this room too harmonic too winter warm windows tall semi-circle sunrising through half pulled shades and Irish lace even the traffic sounds reminding me to five years old sleep overs at my grandmother's she had a red dog named Tuffy and a tabby cat called Mama Kitty. Knowing the sinks full and the counter's full of last nights dinner dishes pot n pans debris, knowing the drive through shark trooper infested school bus dunkin donut dope fiend mania awaits a further inspiration. But better coffee waits for us and there's no snow or frozen thing this February yet. So once more into the extra-ordinary dear friend we shall encounter not mundane but wisdom, the Buddha is offered to the world through your action, so too the Jesus, the Allah, the Goddess, the Yahweh, the Quantum... The sacred is met through offering, the offering is made through action. Even sitting still and action. Today teachers of the road await and I once more seek mindfulness of compassion. Anyway the crows complain for scraps, the child whines, the better coffee waits but will not make itself.

Almost the rain like Ireland

Almost the rain like Ireland as if there were a dirt lane lead down to the lake of fairy sighs strung like vertical pearls a mist rising a silence of swans broken by small woodland birds come to flirt among briar's still bare. The snow drops bloom like small stars bright on slender green so tender primrose cowslip daffodil cannot be far away. But now coffee's ready  some when I pour and hissed complaints I must go tend to spill some when i pour and small terriers black and brown, tabby cats and winter horses on the island distract my thoughts almost scald myself forgetting the pressure and steam when prepping the next cup, for Michelle. So now mill town of my birth dawn. Connecticut ruins of over taxed former industrialist empty factory town. Here we are on the outskirts, half hour drive to work. Here we are making money for high rent poor food and tickets "home" for as close as we can afford it Christmas. We have no terrier or cats and horses are a gone thin smoke distant dream. But sometimes there are whitetail deer poke around the old apple trees out the back of our rented house. One night recently a fox left foot prints in the snow circling the house kept to the side walk until crossing his own trail veered off into the filed of abandoned farmland.

If

If I look deep enough into the window of night halos of kitchen light my own grey head and moving past that, who am I? The word play domino impressions, fragile memories fluctuating body soft hearted emptiness? And oh this morning, always morning hardly silent always noiseless belief is who I am restored repaired dutch boy diked, band-aids cabbages kings strings and ceiling wax. What I was taught must I be ever? Some days begin like this; dark windows beyond my reflection seeing nothing remotely me. This is the day of daffodils or maybe tulips? Small brown bag thirteen bulbs to bring to the cemetery. To plant for my mother and for my father. Does the flower seem less sweet because we know it someday will fade? There is no place I know thats still and yet to observe movement must not the observe stand still? This I know for sure; it's earlier in the morning than I like and I still need to get up get dressed right now or else the day will get away.

center

Sometimes

Sometimes the ache of the morning strangely comforts my newly mind. Rings of something other and uninfluenced by reason or my demands cushions the joints circles and supports the ridges of my spine. There is a wilderness within no matter how seemingly repetitive remains day after day uncharted. People who do not know me see sedate a careful methodical awareness each deliberate movement each meditational syllable, a person of wise restraint. I have been asked by strangers what should they do to stop arguing themselves to death. You should know, you seem to have such inner peace. The paradoxical effect of caffeine and old pain, instead I tell them things I can't just now remember. Probably something like Zen, Joseph Campbell and space together and apart. Sometimes when i cannot wear my contacts and the glasses make me sea sick, the soft world of grass and clouds soothes and I gently watch outside through the window across until the briar's even thorns of velvet wondering what may eventually emerge as through minor maladies and discomfort I am removed enough to maybe get the impression of the connected and therefor invisible dots. What separates sky from earth?

Long slender

Long slender limbs of her idle eyes, words becoming fact, dozing across duvet white sunlight curtain-less and strong fingers still and holding to dreams as if tiny birds hatched still needing heat but gently now. What secrets ceilings hold. How many mysteries mere fact and how often do I stare contemplation of such fates and figures as if study would inspire Rosetta cracked and peeling tiles, egg shell spidered nicotine tinge smoke detector plain brass empty fixtures of sometimes light translations plain revealed. Now though stretch deep breath toss and turn our own movements added to mute hieroglyphs we make our way inevitably towards check out time. Our words the language of coffee pleasant in botanical porcelain. Our contact smooth occasional sweet and creamy sign, an easy jumble warm linen bedding healed from room service interrupt-us our coffee mouths roll sure certain syllables across around, up and down knowing days like this like any other made and mandated to be spent. How nice to do so thoughtless. Some rooms though, I will not surrender  keys to easily.

Today refused

Today refused the sink full, refused the audible complaints, crows impatient for scraps and fat as if they knew soft Cabernet rib eye steaks ten p.m. alone with sci-fi DVD's. X-file memory lingered now angularly my pre-coffee kitchen receipt as if the same sun graced us together amazing our way through un-pathed reservoir tall red pines every inch a carpet worth laying down on. What if you were here now? What if just like I remembered you were here now. But no, not this now, this now I am afraid of, rather our now or our own now of then; smoking popping dropping snorting drinking now both hands full both high school bodies, twenty, twenty one year old bodies wild full dancing midnight at the park and swallowed whole each others dark so found our way and sandy sheltered on the shore when pale into orange wore purple phantom clouds gone into a pale yellow walk me home alone dawn. Across the other kitchen table of my mother's somehow even I explained in some way that all she did was make me tea and told me take it with me up to bed.

Slow

Slow as a screw cap wine morning dark faded into rain blocked sunrise. Chug of the coffee making scents of redemption and awareness fills my kitchen. Unlike the rest of the world Friday is the hardest one too many days dragged wake-ups are not really awake when you've not slept. Now among the shadows forgotten aspects of our truth. Hamlet the shadow of Summer's dream.  The eighteen year old girl sentenced to life for murder of a nine year old girl when she was fifteen. Tried as an adult. No blood ever found on her or her clothes. No murder weapon recovered. Her sixteen year old boy friend, interviewed six times by thy FBI, failed polygraph, none of that allowed to the jury. Fifteen year old in jail for three years before convicted, denied application to continue education, innocent until proven guilty. Eighteen year old Tibetan girl Buddhist nun under Chinese occupation. Practitioner of compassion for all beings. Sits down outside the abbey in a pool of gasoline - lights the match in protest, light upon atrocities, atrocious act among atrocious acts. She and all who immolate are terrorists, seek only to disrupt the lawful Chinese government and it's people. This is the morning shadow of the night before. Coffee the shadow of the cheap screw cap bitchy white wine slowing me down into crow sound shapes emerged from darkness into grey dawn.

Today

Today on the great yellow sheet of possibility he hurried the blue notes of coffee too hot to drink comfortably. It was the gold dead grass of February, not dead, sleeping, not sure of the difference. Empty unsure sky whether snow or rain no birds at the apple tree feeders wishing to find out. Where ever it is they go, the birds are always out. Can you imagine a place where no one knows how they should behave, where the fear factor absent no motivation, no explanation, what would we be like? Compassionate birds always out never needing to steal. The cheapest coffee comes in a real steel container, has more weight than most and tastes as good as the rest. Now are there things un-wishing to do but wishing were done. The energy of that un-equated equation can be used to do which must be done. What is the term for an equation that is unequal? An un-equal equation is an error. Do all errors need remedy? Do they need to be remedied? And hot from the hoody sweat shirt and seventy degree thermostat he pulls it up over his head remembers five years old and getting stuck.