10/30/2009

Exacting

The marathon pace amounted to what? I can't retrace the lines on my face. You who were wise--all ruined by bankers? Why lie to yourself, to live today by spiting forever? We were meant to be dirty, meant to argue, meant to pick up the cheque after World War III, but then why dream of victory? All our hopes are cruel, but believing less makes us fools.

Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.

10/23/2009

Things that are easy

arithmetic
puns


Things that are hard: everything else

10/15/2009

Hotel Supramonte

If ever I was kidnapped thirty years ago, like Fabrizio De Andre, and forced to spend my nights inside a cave, put for ransom by desperate Sardinian mountain men from the bloody village of Orgosolo, long before the tourists came, I would have asked these men to drag me away to one of those other-worldly open air caves that are hollowed from the cliffs north of the northern tip of the empty Cala Luna-the lonesome 'moon beach' lapped by the similarly crescent-shaped Golfo di Orosei. A hideout found only by boat or by hours-long hike along inland mountain trails, down to a silent river mouth that enjoys an unlikely refuge beneath the Supramonte's grey limestone mass: a strip of sand and driftwood just fifteen paces wide which separates the still freshwater reeds from the searching sea. There I'd wait for rescue in a cave beside the bay, as the sun sets hours early behind cliffs that plunge like a guillotine into dark blue-green waters.

My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.

And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.

10/07/2009

That one song over and over

[always skipping over half the words]

I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.

***

There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees

and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty

you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool

10/06/2009

15 minutes of focus

Too long I put this off, it seems, I use happiness as an excuse not to bust my own knees. It is not allowed to slink silently into bliss, while my charges sit in a barn underground amid the cobras' hiss. If I could take you where I've gone it would not do, for I do as I must, and you are you--and what use will I be to all of us if I don't do write by you?

I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".

I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.

So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.

I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?