Passenger Unresponsive

The collision felt accidental, but it was inevitable. 

Our poor vehicle with bald tires, creaky brakes, filled with acrid and consuming exhaust fumes was totaled. The opaquely crackled windshield obscured the scene from inside and out.

I thought I’d died in the front seat. I saw him close his eyes as he was thrown from the car.  After the sound of screeching and the bash of implosion, I heard only hissing. It was coming from my chest as I tried to breathe.

In hindsight, the campaign had damaged the road under repeated heavy truckloads of disrespect, anxiety and disgust.  The location: the intersection of Liberal and Conservative.  The time: late in the evening after we’d met our last obligation.  We'd lost control of the vehicle as we swerved to avoid the election. The destination, never arrived at, was acceptance. 

Perhaps if we’d left home earlier it all could have been avoided.  

99% gibbous haiku

Round moon in near pines

as smooth a face as water

washing clean your cheeks

Rainbow House

...Two writing workshops, a retreat in a multi-colored cabin in Big Sur California, and the book The Artist's Way, and this is all I have come up with:



Rainbow House: 

I cannot name for you all the colors I see,

because Mauve
is next to sage
in a velvet pillow
softened
by uncounted bottoms
meditating
the Great "Om".

because asparagus green
is covering rough planks
under-painted by a sky-blue
and bleached
by sun and wind and bare feet and hands
in yoga poses
like "downward dog"

because the shadows hold
molded corners
trimmed with lavender
next to seafoam catching
sunrise beams
at just the right angle
under a cloudless
sky

because the water
in the bathtub
is shining across the splashes
of Monet's, Margaret Lofton's,
Don Louis Harrington's
paintings extending
reflections

because the orange I loathed
is re-birthed at every turn
in cantaloupe duvets covering
hot pink sheets
raspberry pillows and turquoise
drapes

because a door is a window
and a cabinet is a pie cellar
and a window is a ship's hull
and a north wall is a mirror
multiplying the colors
in a corner

because lamps
are gossamer balls
and ceilings are parasols
and corners are 4+2, or 4+4 or
4 plus
one

because the paint on the wood
is a palate,
in progress
of never the same two colors
over never the same two adjoining
surfaces distinct only
in connection to
the rainbows
cast

in light.

rewrite: Spring Fever's Touch

Sonnet to Wrists (1)

Some might say they wear a heart on their sleeve,

others blush a facial rush so red they bleed.

Others' secretive heat of embers rise

from an ancient hearth, deep within birth’s bed.

They burn an inward brand, through met eyes

to hands withheld beyond cuff’s end.

As collared dog will snarl, chained and hackled,

so damned pulses surge to hands and pretend

in tingling wrists bound tightly by shackles,

unsurfaced, unread, unheard, unopened.

How does one release passion’s hidden lock?

It requires no key, nor combination.

Thine own hand’s end unties the binding knot

by mere touch at hand’s origination. 

Spring Fever's Touch

For when the heat of embers rise
secretive beneath birth's bed
or burn inward through met eyes
to hands withheld beyond cuff's end

Just as a collared dog may snarl, toothful and hackled,
emotion's pulses surge to hands upended
as same as bound by shackles
unsurfaced, unread, unheard, unopened.

To release passion's simple lock
requires no key nor combination
for hand's end unties the knot
by mere touch at hand's origination.

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.

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!

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......

Ten aren't enough

stop, Stop! Stop the pain!

"Ten fingers and toes",

sigh, watch as he grows.

stop, Stop! Stop the truck!

He hit the lamp post,

for he didn't look back.

stop, Stop! Stop the driver!

He's gone in the twilight

and forgotten his headlights.

stop, Stop! Stop the trip!

He's left home

without his phone.

stop, Stop! Stop for gas!

The tank was low

and he had no cash.

Even if stopped, silent, and still,

our son at the wheel

gives me the chills.

(True story, just because we can count 10 fingers and toes at birth, doesn't mean he'll keep them!)

Woman of the vine to Gilgamesh:

As for you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,

make merry day and night. 

Of each day make a feast of rejoicing,

Day and night dance and play!

Let your garments be sparkling fresh,

your hair be washed, bathe in water.

Pay heed to the child holding your hand,

Let your spouse delight in your embrace.

(...for death is the fate of man.)

This the advice from the Epic of Gilgamesh, as the king searched for immortality and mourned the loss of his beloved brother and companion. Written on clay tablets 2000 years BC in Mesopotamia.  Have we learned it yet?

My poetry reading nights

Where you read from an unfolded square,

drawn as a handkerchief

to catch my tears

and blow my nose.

Where you whisper

prayers to the gods of life

and rattle charms of beaded and feathered gourds

against the chains of death,

Where your hands press open the pages

awarded satin ribbon markers,

the corners creased

by fingers licked with a chocolate tongue,

Where men chant

as softly as the mother 

who closes her eyes to sing

to an infant in the dark,

Where women bare the shame of 

irregular butts and bloody panties,

and where I have to imagine you 

in your wrinkled and sweaty underwear

just to have the courage to enter here…..

Where a slap in the face

might as well be on my upended newborn butt

and I still find the courage to see you

in your wrinkled underwear,  

just to read to you,   here,   tonight….                                         1-19-2012   DGG 

Lowest winter
sun rose
warming inner
window pane

Wind Dervishes

A rushing

like water falling

calls me.

I try to face,
and brace against
an animalistic air.

I follow leaves

like dervish dancers

leading flight

from trees

who let go

overnight

Oars

"There comes a time",
said the sage
to the drenched woman,
"to use your arms as oars."

"When the mother of all
storms surges its
crushing waves,
pounding and plowing
across the bow,
and tears through sails
as through your lungs,
and against your ribs
like spars,
it's time to reach
your arms as oars.

Your oars are
smooth and broad,
oak old and oak hard,
polished by oil,
smoothed by sweat,
and molded by toil.

They will guide the bow,
align the sheer,
override the surf,
undermine the tempests,
and hold
the old boat
afloat."

WEATHERING THE STORM

Wind pushes loose bodies around, and through them
we are space
Rain blankets down, running rivulets through
we are water
Waxing gibbous moon, one eye open in view
we are light





(funny how life changes make unseen storms in a potentially tranquil world)

Moonless shadows fall

on straight stone paths in stillness

beyond briared woods.

Rory hit the wall with a silence,
like the sound a skull drum shakes.
Rory felt like a clay pot
crumbled before it bakes,
in oven-hot hands that
burn til they ache.
Rory lost grip, felt as brittle sticks
snapping beneath tines of a rake,
without an ounce, an inch,
a peck, a pinch it might take
to understand how
an olive-pit breaks.

serendipity in a paradox #12

Change

Caught in

autumnal

incessant

hazey heat

reflections,

the first storm

urges

before it

a windforce-cold

sand-bit feel.

Dearest low 

barometric

dive

lifts me

from my seat.

See, there

blown

upon gusts

three turkey vultures

play with it's force,

bringing my eyes

winging

out of my head

so my heart

can watch the leaves

change.

making rope

We held each end, spread

five times the need apart, handles 

smooth and firm, twine doubly doubled

rat-tails, porcine bristled, porcupine fine.

Twisting, taught, tonal, tight,

you held firm, leaned against its pull,

I spun the handle, and wound it round,

tough, alive, coiled and stretched the spring.

Preconceived, at the cusp of curling,

a third hand becomes anchor, midway holding 

half of each snaking together, weaving one wound braid.

Capable of unraveling, we hold onto the knot.

(I have learned to make rope from twine. The process becomes magic in the hands of boys, with a t-shaped dowel and nail tool, spinning the twine tightly until it folds upon itself in a coiled rope. 

I am learning to keep a relationship from unraveling, like a rope maker, we need to tie up loose ends)