Grandma Pearl's Painting

Grandma Pearl - might I see you
with your bent back, purple hair, and your kitchen guilt 
of osteoporosis - and a punishing grey tongue
your worn thin dresses
sweeping the floor in Denver on the linoleum,
past the one painting you did,
in the basement
where dreamland rendered
between red painted bricks of your home,
(hysterically) the nice Grandson watching,
while you apply more red to white canvas,
Suffern dreams danced-
Aunt Ruth, Uncle Bob, a stranger with a platform
in his pocket
and huge young bald head
of Denver Nazi Order

-radio spoke bad news
Alan Berg gunned down. 
at the hands of a white supremacist

Grandma
Bruce Pierce is dead, Bruce Pierce is in Eternity, Bruce Pierce is with
Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

Though I see you walking still, a ghost in Highland Town Center,
down the aisle, observing my customer service
limping a little with a humped back,
in what must have been a worn thin,
overworked dress,

praising my father, the Dentist, on his visit to Denver
-see you bent over in the kitchen
cooking Macaroni despite Osteoporosis
and lighting the Sabath candles
to bring in one more Passover. 

Bruce Pierce is dead and Alan Berg is not speaking
The fuel Berg spilled is not aired
Uncle Harold with his well groomed style,
Greg is married to a beautiful art teacher,
Andy guitar in hand, a monument in San
Francisco Chronicle playing psychedelic muse.

last time I saw you was the hospital
and you had lost that viperous bite
you were on your way out, headed east, 
towards New York 
and your dreams of Swan Dives into a stilled  Suffern Lake.   

A Day in the Life

It is 11:10 in Lakeland, a Tuesday,
two days after the World Series,
it is 2012 and I brush my teeth pearl white,
because I will get off the cozy couch in my abode 
at 1:15 and then go straight to Publix,
and I don't know who will buy my chicken.

I walk up the freezing, tree lined, dead end street
and open the mailbox with my small golden key
a stack of unwanted bills and political ads
greet my blue oil pocked hands.

                                        I go on to my deli
and Miss. Calmwater (first name Bernice I once heard)
doesn't even tell me to cut the salami thinner.
And I ponder O'Keefe as I exhibit the slice,
or did I re-imagine film-scenes  from the Artist,
that dog stole the show, and made me smile; or
was I thinking about which friends I would call,
the images were practically lulling me to sleep,
with salami on my slicer.

And then I am asked to help Ms. Cherry
I tread on to the kitchen cautiously
but my feet slip Chaplinesque from the grease
spilled onto the floor.  I wake up from my dream
and stab the dead chickens. 

And I am sweating a lot, because it is time to go
homeward bound, and so much to clean;
while Patsy Kline sings the lines to Crazy
written by Willie Nelson.
                                  I push my broom faster.   

 Last night I saw an article that struck me as quit sick.  A restaurant nearby is   promoting body sushi, where you eat pieces of sushi off of a model.   This is to me a depraved way to enjoy food.  I feel that things like Body Sushi can easily lead to the above sketch, its just a matter of degrees.) This is a sketch of an idea, I could not write the full story as it scared me too much, I just wanted a rough sketch here.  

The beautiful model laid on the cloth covered table, deliciously lathered with special seasoning, her body was covered with pieces of meat. 

The master sushi chefs were preparing the main course while the spacemen awoke to sensual pleasures. The clients sat with their lips quivering in anticipation of the full course.  .   The men awaited smoking cigars and swapping stories told too many times at the mahogany stained table.  And yes, on space capsule Xeron, their were strip joints modeled after the old legends of Hustler, Penthouse, and Playboy.  The stories of the men whispered up with the smoke. 

Strippers danced on poles, teasing the spacemen who stared.  Their breasts were sprayed down with glitter, the disco ball reflected on the women's glittery breasts, shinning faeries on the wall.   The space traveler's  hard ons were hidden beneath the lacquered oak dark stained table. Some of the men were business men signing contracts and entertaining clients, others were space cowboys on leave. Some of the men joistled with their dicks, while others played with their straws in their pink Cosmos.  All of the men were guilty of a feeling that they were about to do something not quite right.

"Gentlemen!"  The steward spoke,  "Please join me in the pleasure den, where tonight we have a real surprise!!!"

The men arose from their tables and followed the steward to a back room.

This practice has been outlawed on Earth, but here on planet X we think not.  This is a special event which we offer you to participate in tonight.   We ask that you show decorum and not fight over the pieces of meat from the model-Angelic.   Angelic will not feel a thing, I promise you,  for she has been thoroughly drugged.  So stick your knives and forks into her flesh, and carve her up boys! She's all yours!!!!

If their is any thing that my stewards and I can get you to make your night more enjoyable let us know, we will be happy to assist you.  And we hope y'all have a great night here." 

The night commenced in bloody mayhem.

Flash Trending

The Ripple Effect circles out and avenges my IPhone with static, and maybe a Mexican Radio here and there, on this Cinco-DeMayo Morning.  The phone reports of a battle long past fought between Mexico and France.  France?

Loving the Future

A farmer in the field sees the shadow moving across the land, the shadow is complexity filled:   hope-despair, fear-brave, but then the word became flesh. The blue rooster cried out for rain, but the clouds would not open up, upon the white painted barn.  If only rain could collect on the field parched by the sun.   Vultures floated, as if bad omens.  

 As the dark purple cloud moves across his farm rising the dust up in whirling eddies he rests on his shovel.  He rested and all around him he heard the sound of dried wheat stalks swaying in the wind.   Dust tickled his throat.  He coughed.  He held onto his hat made of straw, he feared it would blow away.  All the land was thirsty, but his farmers almanac did not report any rain. The almanac had not said one word about banks calling in bank loans.

The farmer smiled.  He thought of all of the bank notices that were collecting on his kitchen table. The table was dust-filled, he had written S.O.S. in the dust, as a message maybe to a UFO or was it God?  He had borrowed on the banks in order to plant this year's crop. The year before all was wasted. By one hail storm! This year the drought! And still the banks called and called and called and called upon the isolated farmer.  The banks had lent the farmer money, and were now calling about the loan.   The banks not paid, sent yellow foreclosure notes. The official notes laid like a deck of tarot cards played by a psychic at the county fair.  The wood of the table held secrets from forgotten conversations.  Recorded in its wood so long ago.

The horror, of official visits from official representatives of the good old banks, was a serene nightmare.

The land had been with his family for sixty years.  His great grandfather had bought the land in 1866 a year after coming back to the Carolinas.  A year after killing his last soldier in blue.   His great grandfather hoped for a new beginning in Ohio.   A land of promise, a land that was fertile and ready for growing.  The land had been a stage of marriages, burials, and harvest festivals.   A place where one called home.  

The farmer knew his life here in Ohio was endangered. But still the farmer smiled. He joyfully accepted the plundering of his property for he knew what the bible declared, you will have a better possession an abiding one....He knew this land belonged to God. If God's will was to sell the land than so be it, no worries. Even if this meant working at a factory in Cincinnati, or in Cleveland.  He hoped beyond hope that he could move on from here.  But all he knew was the tending of the farm.  He smiled through the broken dreams and gutter swamps of his mind. Because he had an abiding possession that would never fade from Glory.

He looked at his hands and smiled.   Locusts played their legs. He wish he could have seen the sign of the times, he wish he could have seen the seven years of bad, and seven years of good.  He would have sold the farm the year before and have some change in his pockets.  But now all he had was faith in God and a smile that stated, "So be it!"

The wind scooped up the top soil.

He recalled his bible reading today Hebrews 10:32-39.  And he said to himself: "Amen!"

Haiku from Lost Note

Border land fences
psychic razor barbed lines
cut by crow's talons. <  I found this note while cleaning up my work room. The note read This borderland has fences made of psychic razor wire. So I thought of a black crow sitting on a wire cutting away the wire. Why does the crow not get electrocuted? Well these are the borderland states where some things just are as they are and there is no point in attempting to reason them out. One must just understand them by a little faith. I am influenced right now by Stephen King in his Dark Tower series and by Jung's notes on Dreams. These create a sense of the mysterious borderland .

Do not throw any notes away without putting it into some form so that you can capture the moment. Haiku or some sort of Haiku it does not have to be confined to the static form, but the form helps frame the thought. Especially if the note stirs you in anyway. If the note makes you cringe than please keep this idea. Any idea that has a sort of emotive power has the ability to bring us to some place else.

Haikus: Birds on A Stormy Day

Blue rooster crowed 

the clouds opened upon

the painted white barn.

Rain poodles downward, 

collecting on the filed 

parched by the sun.

Surfin' on the wind 

vultures float on up 

then speed on down.

White Egrets lined

sentries on a parade route, 

spartan and solid.