irish winter part 2 - Pants

Irish Winter part2 : pants (intimate)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There is no fire and its cold. I ,usually so phobic of the cold ,today don’t mind. Welcome cold let me feel the small pain of knowing I’m still alive. happy to be so. of course I’m wearing my fingerless yak hair gloves from Darcy’s, Michelle’s over sized brown jumper form Jones – over a denim shirt over a maroon tea shirt; a pair of Levis brought back from last years trip to the states, blue wool walking socks, n a pair of regatta waterproofs. And why is it a pair of pants? Is each leg a pant and therefore you have a pair? shouldn’t it just be a pant? It must be that each leg is a pant, therefore I’ll put on my pants. maybe originally they came separate? Un-joined like long socks? Pair of socks makes sense. Two make a pair. I put on one my sock then the other and if they match it’s a pair. If they don’t is it ,or are they, still a pair? Can you have a pair of unmatched socks? Maybe if they’re not on you they’re not a pair but once you put them on they are even if the don’t match? I’m wearing a pair of un -matching socks? or is it unmatched. I’m wearing a half a pair of socks on each foot? anyway why a pair of pants, I’m not wearing two pants I’m wearing one blue denim Levis pant.

Lapwing is editing a new collection of poems for publication. I had thought it might be ready this year which would have made it 8 years since they did Searches For Magic. Its been about 10 month now I think, more than a baby. Oh well horses take eleven months. In fairness I sent Dennis about 200 poems, basically the contents of caribou and sister stones that I self published via LuLu. Well I’m grateful for his interest. was hoping he’d print soon so I can attempt to do so public reading and have product to sell. The LuLu is mad expensive for shipping and blah blah blah.

I have been too intimate with my life for regrets. I was happy for that thought, it freed me from the erroneous belief that life must have regrets. I have had dreams that didn’t come true, things I felt so sure of that turned out to be not so, but how would I wish away any of my closest friend, my own life, my own self experience? If I were to have only one minute to relive before I die – would I waste time saying OK but not this one not that? I liked the little boy who lived for a while w/ no siblings, I liked the shy boy who got slapped around in school, I admired the courage that teenager had to drop acid to smoke dope to fall in love without any restraint to write a life time of poetry, I felt protective of the young man in jail, scared for the one who registered for the draft, and for the one who loved women, who loved the whole idea of women who loved the exploration of the most mysterious beautiful being called women and who mostly always ever seemed to create pain…
I have been too intimate with my life for regrets. It is a beautiful day, it is a good day to die, it is another day deserving gratitude to all who were my mothers and fathers, all my teachers, benevolent and wrathful formal and informal.
I am here in this beautiful land with my beautiful partner and our beautiful daughter and today I’m 53 years old. woo hoo!

Irish Winter part 1 with Richard Brautigan

Part one

the Richard Brautigan of my youth brings me not fame and fortune artist type but rather here,, un wanting to go to work, un wanting to start the fire; for some reason not minding even this Irish cold of a stone cottage on the soft outlands by some ancient fairy tear drop lake. older than children of lir, older than swans, sorrows of an age of ice surrendered, scared into a valley of wind and soft reeds l such as where stones were heaved into boxes for the filing of small human lives. grey bones of long dead glaciers and the twisted muscle of earth’s resistance, cut to fit by long dead humans . Stone of bone encapsulated ice age how many days? Days of even now the open air mid winter warmer outside than is in. the stone locks in its glacial ghosts. the nights even by an open fire, filled with whispers of returned revenge. I could fit a small car into the fire place. In America it would be romantic. Here I suppose sometimes it is , in the summer if we get one, in the golden autumn a few days now in November. To talk about the weather an insincere politeness, unless you were out in the rural lands where then it was a true concern as well as a way of showing friendliness. These days now to talk about the weather reminds me of cliché Si-Fi stories something from the 50s, you know nuclear winter or disrupted axis due to alien interventions or atomic testing or maybe an asteroid? Trees are growing within the Arctic circle. The north pole will soon be used to mark a golf cup.

There are places to sit inside the hearth. Places to sir by the cast iron crane that once held the iron handles of iron cooking pots, sway them in and out back n forth like the three bears, like Hansel and Gretel like a witches cauldron bubble and trouble, like tiny Tim like a dream of every long gone discoverer of open fire. the heaviness of stone, iron, cold, fire, turf, these were the places that only famine and/or bailiffs cold ever lever you out of. But now I am here from America, wondering who the girls were in the photographs with Richard Brautigan on the covers of his books. wondering whatever happened to people I used to know back in the USA, high school days and can I ever not wish justice on those bulling bastards of my first year? ah but today is now and the sun catches little dangling crystals off the candle holder small rainbows brief n glorious across the table up the white walls into the dark beam ceiling disappear because of marauding clouds reappear dance renew as my typing slightly shakes the table.

 

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