Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The clouds before the ground

The sun warmed the clouds before the ground.
Inside the diner, the air preserved the
food from the kitchen to the table.
The garlic in the food was spicy on
two plates, one paper, one china.
The calling of the children and
the workers clattered our teeth.
But the sun outside warmed the
clouds before the ground.
Our feet were crossing roads but
words moved us forward.
The houses passed us by but
our lives unfolded.
The sun melted the chocolate in
your eyes for a moment.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Sunday 160: Alexithymic



Alexithymic I vacate a vacuum of vocable volumes. Verily a void of values is in view. Viable visions all too few, very vile vapid vicissitudes are vulcanized.  





This is a Sunday 160, a short story in 160 characters, spaces included. If you can make 160, post on Sunday and tell myself, and our host with the most, Monkey Man http://petzoldspracticalprose.blogspot.com/">HERE
Ha! have a happy week, I'll catch my muse one of these days......
In the meantime, please send me yours!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Assessing a life


Nursing assessment: 
female, " Ms. Doe"
caucasian, (white... with blue ink tatoos).

Age, unknown
over 50 under 80
(1-9-6-0 on her lifeline palm!)

Breaths 20, shallow, uneven
rise on her chest (with names:
"Jules Graham Alden"?)

Heartbeat 100, rapid pulses
and faint (beneath inked 
tiny poppy wristlets).

Abdomen, soft, rebounding,
normal sounding,
(at her navel, a Celtic knot surrounding).

Skin intact, free of bedsores
on heels, hips, elbows
(hosting animals in scores:

hummingbirds behind her arms
around her heels, talons like thorns
tortoise-shell across her sacrum forms).

Strong pedal pulses (revealing anklets,
written with lore of Pacific Crest, 
John Muir, and Yukon footsteps).


..............diagnosis: "dementia, Julie G. Alden, family unknown".







What would Dostoevsky say?


What Color, Grass?

What color is
grass 
today?

Through opalescent
filtered light
not the same
as tonight.

See, I rise:
earth hits the skies
azure stone
settles my eyes.

Tear-tones
leaking laser-
cut crystalline
star flashes.

What shades of
grass emerge?
rough edges
erased to shine.

On the cusp
of its zenith
the sun sucks
and grey-washes.

Mutating marbled
erasing away
receded rolling
Green Granite Grey



"There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it," Fyodor Dostoevsky.
(Although it was forbidden by his parents, Dostoyevsky liked to wander out to the garden of the hospital where his father worked with the poor. The patients sat in the garden to catch a glimpse of the sun. The young Dostoyevsky spent time with these patients and listened to their stories.)  I'm off to work, hospital, hand therapy, with stories to listen to......