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