Best of 2012

...and the best thing he said all year...

Still laughing...

2013 Goals Get Lucky

Here they are. Cheeky. Geeky. and a little streaky.

Would love to read yours, as well!

Real World vs. First World Problems

At the gallery yesterday, I was speaking with a friend who was on her way to volunteer at a free clinic. She and I do not share political views, but we do share an understanding of what she calls the modern American "do whatever you want" parenting style is netting us in social consciousness. Now more than ever, some of us are giving more than our share to charities, our families, and society while others complain that there is never enough money, stuff, time, etc. for "me", the emerging people-eater of greed that has nothing to do with socioeconomic status.

For example, we discussed the necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, that is plaguing our local youth, a little-known problem that has prompted one pharmacy to give away free antibiotics. "Is it poverty, education--?" I asked my friend. "Probably lazy parenting," she shrugged. She is echoing what I heard from our pharmacist and our nurse practitioner who examined my son after a physical injury that included a nasty cut on his foot (resulting from a teenage pool party fail that predictably followed "hold my root beer"). The PA warned my son about keeping the cut clean and taking preventative measures to avoid the flesh-eating bacteria their office keeps identifying and treating for after minor cuts turn rogue. My son had one reply, “You sound just like my mom.”

So I wonder if our parenting, which is now blamed for flesh-eating bacteria, is another casualty of a culture of First World Problems. "My parents came straight home from work, changed for a party... Guess it's the Dominoes app & my Green Dot card for dinner again!" What may hide in this origami of internet memes is a quiet truth: teenagers who are continuously talking to their friends via recently-upgraded computers and smart phones may be exchanging only an occasional text with their parents. When do such parents engage in a meaningful conversation with their kids?

My son is 17 and doesn't drive yet. We had a terrible car accident over three years ago, and he's taking Driver's Ed to feel the confidence that has eluded him after staring down death across the dashboard of a Benz. As a result, we take him to school, pick him up after school, and he does his homework, indie game designing and the requisite gaming from my gallery office every day. This arrangement has permitted us a lot of interaction. Turns out he's quite a salesperson when I step out to an appointment, and it's nice to have his IT expertise in-house. But mostly, it's just nice to have him with us, along with our gallery Corgi pup. On Saturdays, his friends stop by the gallery to pick him up for parties and mall rat missions, and he occasionally tutors a girl from his school whose parents own the restaurant a couple of spaces away.

So he gets to take part in real life with his family every day. And he gets parented by me personally every day. We even share Internet memes as a family. First World Problems are always good for *lolz*. My kid knows the difference between a problem, such as trending flesh-eating bacteria in an affluent Florida resort, and a First World Problem, such as "my mom is sick of me losing my cell phone and has replaced my (broken) smart phone with a disposable, pay-as-you-go phone." Or real pain, such as a long-distance relationship in which a couple talks more on Skype than in person" and First World Pain, such as "my mom says I have to wait a whole week for the money to buy that extra RAM I want to order from Newegg to soup up gaming on the custom computer I'm building."

I can testify that sometimes it takes being a parent to learn to recognize the difference. And perspective. Just as entrepreneurs must delay gratification to build a business that will provide us with a payday, so society must pay it forward to our kids to provide them with a future. We have to train them how to bathe properly, wear clean socks (to avoid Zombie Apocalypse-grade rotting flesh), and look for signs of others they encounter not being able to afford soap or socks. We have to teach them to share out of a grateful heart.

For me, the best way to accomplish this might be through spending time with my son and identifying teachable moments when living by example produces conversations about why we volunteer with a literacy program and donate gallery goods to silent auctions. It may be allowing him to experience delayed gratification through making him part of the family budget, instead of sacrificing our financial reserves every time he begs for an iPad or Xbox upgrade.

Parenting may require learning an emerging language, in my case programming (yeah, right!) and purchasing TV shows from Amazon instant digital that we can watch and geek out over as a family (i.e.:  Fringe, Firefly, Revolution). Parenting in our family includes using the Panini maker as a lesson in self-sufficiency (my son has asked for his own to take to college--it's the new, first world version of the hot plate).

Am I gloating about my good parenting? Hardly! I did a decade of it as a single mom and live with constant regrets. But we do listening to feelings and second chances in our family. Real world problems exist, just usually not between my son and me. And when they come, we know how to solve them with compassion.

That's what's missing in this First World where running out of battery juice and having the wrong phone charger can be allowed to ruin our whole day and keep the focus on ourselves. We need compassion, we need to discipline ourselves to look up from texting our kids and be still with them so that they have their needs for belonging met at home. So that we notice, or they show us, when cuts aren't healing right or real emotional wounds are causing them real pain. So that we can teach compassion by example. Every day.

If x, then why?

It's kind of awesome to sit here and listen to my son crack up at Minecraft gags on youtube. I'm working tonight, doing the writing, marketing, sales, accounting and such. He's hanging out and taking over when I need to run an errand. My husband is out teaching an ESL evening class, so it's just us. 

I'm also listening to lots of sounds downtown that indicate the start of the season, including a couple of new business owners, elderly Italian men, gabbing out back. The "woo" girls stayed home, so the wine bar and restaurant voices drifting across the avenue suggest ordinary conversation. 

This is the perfect night to hang a couple of internal memos in the office. The first one is a clever reminder that I'm so grateful to own my gallery space and have my son hanging out here. We have a rather geeky way of honoring that relationship with humor.

Why do I own a gallery? I am an artist, and believe artists were born to a particular role in society. Jeff Goins has come up with a reminder that he says you are welcome to print and hang, as I did. It's the Artist Manifesto, artfully rendered. Enjoy!

When in Oddity, Wear an Odd Tee

Thank you to all Veterans for fighting for our freedom. I still miss some of you a whole lot...

Today was one of those days... You know, a Monday. So I wore black. And read a lot of funny stuff. 







Here's what I found for myself: 

Source: thinkgeek.com via Mermaids on Pinterest

< And my son wants this Linux Cheat Sheet one.

Source: thinkgeek.com via Mermaids on Pinterest

And to further celebrate Monday, I have reminded myself of this, oddly enough...

And I gave this thank you card to my husband:

Hope your Monday was better than mine, but also hope this brought you an odd smirk or two... ;)

Time, As Viewed From Down Here On Earth

Time. The Watchers, or Observers as they are called in Season Four of Fringe view time as something through which to mark events… But what about typical humans? We watch Dr. Who and contemplate time travel. It’s intrinsic to our existence to experience its passing, and remember the past, wonder about the future…

But time cannot be stored up, we cannot be in debt with time, how we spend it is a moment-by-moment decision. We cannot promise time with accuracy, because each moment is a surprise when it arrives. We are used to that surprise, perhaps, until a car almost takes out our entire family by running a red light and feel lucky to be alive.

We cannot count on any moments but this one, although by playing the law of averages we still do. We plan a future, just in case. Some of us strive spiritually to live as if this moment is our last, while most of us are planning fiscally to live approximately 80 years.

We save money in case we might not have enough in the future, or to take a trip somewhere in the future. We cannot save the time to go on that trip, we simply bet on being alive to do so. If we are not alive then, perhaps we will have enjoyed planning and saving for the trip we didn’t live long enough to take.

My grandmother saved money her entire life to take trips she was too sick to take in her retirement. She wasted her future by smoking cigarettes, the doctors said. But that’s not true. We cannot count time that has not arrived as ours. We can only live each moment in a way of wellness that allows a better chance of wellness if there is a future for us.

If we plan a trip, we are setting a goal, gathering supplies, saving money, getting tickets, telling our associates not to expect us at work during the week of the trip… but the time we are targeting is but a wish. We wish and hope for the time, but cannot know for certain we will be able to make the trip.

So what is time but an existential state? It’s not a guarantee. It can only be spent as it arrives, it is priceless in that it cannot be borrowed, saved, sold or earned. We plan on it, but there is no insurance we can buy that will give us time when time runs out. It has its own way no matter what.

Even God will not tell us what our time on earth is to be for each of us. This keeps the spiritual process of time in its proper perspective, perhaps. One moment at a time, we decide how to live. And that is the truth of time. We can live as if we have many years to use, but time cannot be stored up and preserved.

Again, despite our plans, each moment arrives as a surprise to us. We pretend not to be surprised, because we are great philosophers in our own minds. However, if we are living in reality, will we not recognize that each moment is a gift, and that we have the opportunity to make a decision about what to do with each moment--?

What will I do in this moment? The awareness of its value to me is suddenly overwhelming. No wonder we stopped wondering at each moment as it arrives, or we might get nothing done but feeling grateful and praising the beauty of everything we encounter. And would that be a terrible way to live?

So how many moments should we praise? One moment every ten moments? One moment every ten hours?  Some of us only praise God in a moment when we think we are going to die and we don’t die. We are all going to die, we just don’t know when.

How can we praise every moment of every day? Perhaps by praising each moment in the subconscious part of ourselves, or somewhere on the tip of our focus, somewhere in our awareness… And if we live in that praise, how grateful might we become?

What a relief to let go of the disappointment remembered in the past and the fear often anticipated in the future, and just feel grateful in this moment. I desire mindfulness of the blessing of this moment as my meditation. In our family, we say we love one another when we part company, even for what we think will be a few moments, because it is uncertain whether we will get the chance again: 

“Just in case I don’t get another moment to say it, thank you, I love you, I appreciate you. I’m so glad I was in this moment with you.” 

Darling, Stop.

Darling, I’ve detected
A serious leak in your dignity.
Stop your face,
Go look in the mirror.
Imagine if paparazzi
Were following you,
This would be
The front cover of the gossip rag.

This hag you’ve become indicates
You’re letting it all in.
Stop letting it all out
Out loud.
Stop. This. Leak.

Go into your room,
Take it to the Supervisor.
The rest of us are quite incompetent
In such matters, I assure you.

Have some class,
Shining your ass will only serve to give
Those who keep files on you something new
And incriminating.
It’s intimidating
What they do with those files—
Miles and miles of files
On women who lose their cool.
They paint us fools.

Don’t let them see you bleeding out.
Don’t shout.

Instead, kneel beside the bed,
Lay your forehead along the edge
And breathe out the pain.
Rage if you must, then listen.

All that stuff you let in
From the world,
Push it out,
And let in the peace.

1) Release.

2) Peace.

Hold up your hand, let’s practice.
Stop. Just say it.
"Stop."
Stop to the manipulators,
Space invaders,
Mind raiders…
Say, “Stop!”

Draw the line,
Expect respect.
Dole out compassion in such a fashion
That they come to you with humility,
And you get to keep your sanity.

Then
Say this to them
As I’ve said it to you.
It’s easy to do.
(And contagious, too.)

But In a Geeky Way.

FB: P

My son and I communicate our funny links through FB messaging. You cannot Pin It from FB to Pinterest... So I was thinking about my social networking life (?) and concluded the following:

b. inspired

After a few days of contemplating the darkness, a few things came to light:

Cracker Barn! (Tales from the Vault)

Some Midwestern Spring Day, 1997

Yesterday, Shayne asked how paper is made. We talked about trees, waterways, paper mills…and then I mentioned, “Mommy makes paper sometimes.” So today, at Shayne's request, Shayne and I made paper.

We’ve actually enjoyed this activity together before, but Shayne’s curiosity did not extend beyond swirling his hands in the slurry of pulp and flowers in the mixing bowl. To him, it was probably just another curious thing Mommy does when she might otherwise be mopping floors.

Today was different; he was pursing his own interest in the art of papermaking. We gathered our materials:

• Blue piece of construction paper and some leftover brown package wrap
• Casting molds by Paper KrazeTM 
• The Blender!
• 2 entire sets of mixing bowls (Shayne enjoys kitchen accessories almost as much as Lego blocks)
• Essential oil of lavenderarious dried flowers and seeds 
• Enough water to make mopping the floor later a cinch

In my opinion, the most tedious part of papermaking is the tearing. I usually do this while reading or talking on the phone. Shayne, however, being the consciously-living soul that he is, found this part of the process most rewarding. Something about watching a child moving objects, releasing all of that energy, brings new awareness to mundane tasks. I began to relish the satisfying act of freeing paper fibers from the bonds of uniformity—Fly, little fibers, fly!

Ahem. OK. So, we amassed enough confetti for a crude celebration, and dumped it into The Blender along with a couple of mugs of water. Shayne added essential oil of lavender, and all I can say is my cabin fever headache vanished at the first whiff—go aromatherapy! I would normally recommend a couple of drops of oil, but 17 drops seemed to work well for Shayne. Maybe we will use the finished paper ornaments as tennis shoe sachets…

Once Shayne’s ears were covered, I switched on The Blender and swirled our paper squares into a pulpy, purple soup. To this we added leftover seeds from last season for texture, and to stretch the dubious worth of our project past its aesthetic limits into yet another level of recycling: Seed paper can be planted in the earth! (In fact, a few years ago the dregs of one batch of paper I made for Christmas sprouted a garden of marigolds beside our composter the following spring.) Shayne dumped in small sunflower seeds, while I sprinkled in mesclun salad mix seed and flax seed. To compliment the generous measure of oil, we added dried lavender blossoms and tea rose petals.

After enthusiastically stirring our liquid paper, Shayne chose a mold tray with a birdhouse theme. I showed him how to lift the mix out of the bowl by the fork-full, allow it to drain a bit, and then pack it carefully into the depressions in the tray. He preferred the task of pressing our designs with a natural sponge to absorb the excess water. 

After the tray was filled with damp pulp and set aside, I slogged off to the garden to dispose of the leftovers. Meanwhile, Shayne located a chopstick and began banging out a tune on the empty mixing bowls and blender. When I returned, we filled the bowls with water to different depths. Shayne then proceeded to drum a convincing rendition of "All You Need Is Love", as I rescued my seeds, tossing a cracker into the zip-lock bag before closing it. 

"Why are you doing that?" Shayne wanted to know. I explained that it absorbs moisture in sugar dispensers, and I was trying the method with our seeds. "Can I have a cracker to absorb all this water in my bowl?

"Uh, sure. But you might need quite a few…"

The cracker rafts sopped up all the water they could hold, as Shayne propelled them around the bowl with his chopstick, humming an invented song. Suddenly, he froze and fell silent, the universal sign of eureka. A moment later, Shayne dispatched me to rescue one of his crackers from certain disintegration. 

"Lift it up," he instructed, directing me with his hands. "Now, put it in the this farm mold very carefully."  I complied, as he began singing, "A cracker barn! A crack-er barn!" piggy-backing another Beatles tune.  Then he carefully smooshed the wet cracker into the mold's hayloft crevices, just as I’d shown him with the birdhouses earlier. After sponging off the excess (slimy) water, Shayne sighed with satisfaction, and hopped down from his chair to set the barn tray beside the others on the dining room table:

Recycled Cracker!

The Mortician’s Apprentice

Now, you sit here wondering about my scar. I see you staring. There's no shame in it, my scar or you staring at it, I mean.

When my daddy was coming up, you weren't supposed to stare, so he learned how to watch out of the corner of his eye for the person he wanted a closer look at to look away. Then he'd sneak a good, long stare.

He told us bedtime stories that would curl our hair some nights. He'd break out the good whiskey and pull me onto his knee and tell my kid brother Kenny, "Load my pipe." then he'd tell us what he'd seen at our age.

"Hold your nose, you don't want to smell this," he told us one time, and we did, half expecting him to poot. Instead he told us of the man he saw in a diner one with gangrene so bad on his big ole foot that the flesh was all black and pulled back to the bone. He said that bone was white as my new permanent tooth.

We could smell the rotten frog smell of that dead foot still attached to a living man. Daddy said he went back to watching out of the corner of his eye as the man dragged that foot right out of the diner and on down the road.

So when one of us kids got a mind to climb a tree and fell out scraping up a knee or elbow, we'd run around the yard scaring each other with the bloody skin, yelling, "gangrene, gangrene!" while the rest of us screamed. We loved gore, thanks to Daddy's staring stories. I guess I write about zombies now for the same reason.

Yeah, I'm a published writer, with clippings and everything. The local newspaper lets me write the obits in exchange for printing my zombie stories. That's how I got this scar, chasing a zombie.

The undertaker at Beezer Funeral Home gave me a tip that a famous local butcher died under gruesome circumstances and I may want to check him out for research purposes. Of course, I made a beeline for Beezer.

Every time I enter the iron gates of the graveyard, the back way to Beezer, Daddy's corny joke comes to mind, "Why is the graveyard so popular? I don't know, but people are dying to get in there!" It's a comfort to hear his voice in my head, especially when I'm trudging through all those spirits. Graveyards are just lousy with ghosts. Haunted, period.

But even scarier are the undead. When a spirit hops inside a corpse, you're just asking for a staring story. That's why I have to see the goriest recently deceased Beezer has to offer, so I can stare as long as I like, imagine sticking a spirit inside that corpse, then write about it.. Bam! Zombie fic.

So I advanced on the slab. Poor Badlatch. I got the biggest steaks out of him back in the day. He gave me those little Cajun filets for almost nothing, too. Wrap them up in bacon, make my Mama's mouth water.

Now he's the meat. And not quite neat. Before Betty gets in here, I can sneak a few shots on my iPhone, I think. A little HD video. Pre-FX, he's a mess. They're talking open casket, but I'm thinking closed. Betty's magic is spectacular, she could make a fortune in Hollywood with her make-up artistry. But still...

McCullen's dead on. This corpse screams zombie. I slip him my milk money and get set up to write my best work.

Apparently Badlatch ran his hand through the thin slicer, after testing the knives. McCullen mumbled something about a domestic dispute while shoving my pair of Lincolns in his pocket. He crossed himself as he left me with the body.

I began with a headshot, a close-up of his blow to the cranium, presumably with a meat cleaver. Lots of skull, a few splinters matted in his blood-encrusted hair. I'll admit to gagging, I mean, I knew this guy.

I just stared. The iPhone clicked away as if of its own accord. Then I looked down at his massive chest, still shrouded in a blood-stained apron--cow's blood, his blood, who knew? And I saw something expand near the neckline of the apron.

A long, raspy moan filled my brain. It was probably a post-rigor gas release, I told myself. But then Badlatch's jaw started to clench and release. The rasping became intentional, like he was trying to talk.

Dead men tell no tales, but this butcher had a lot to say. In the next few seconds--on video, no doubt!--Badlatch let me know he was not the grateful dead, "no!" "Jezebel!" and "hell" were clearly audible. The poet in me admired him for rhyming.

Stock-still, holding my breath, I watched the enormity of Badlatch reanimate. He labored to breathe, then raise his wrecking ball of a head. I reanimated, too, leaping back a few feet, as evidenced later on the iPhone footage. I spied a pool of blood where his head had been.

Somewhere beneath my terror, my soul recognized his. Not quite ready to believe it, I geared up for a zombie apocalypse. Badlatch, King of the Zombies, was rising right before my eyes!

It is intrinsic in science to try to prove our beliefs. If I had paused a moment, I may have cut myself on Occam's Razor, but my body was already following my belief in the undead. I found myself on the defensive.

Badlatch lifted his hand to his head and howled at the bloody patch where he'd been struck hours earlier. A huff like a lion's roar began deep in his throat. His eyes still closed, he hoisted his body from the slab, knocking it over as he scrambled to stand. The instruments on the table next to him sprayed the wall above my crouched form, a scalpel nicking my forehead.

Watching Badlatch from the corner of my eye, I groped for a weapon among the sharps. Then, puny scalpel in hand, I righted myself, squinting through the ribbon of blood from my own wound.

My iPhone in one hand, my weapon in the other, I paused for his next move. Badlatch whimpered. Something inside my fear softened. I pushed away compassion with a grunt of will. You can hear that in the recording.

Then it began, the blind howling of a wounded animal. Looking back, I think, poor butcher. But at the time, I'm ashamed to say I took the opportunity to advance upon the creature with a pathetic threatening swish of my tiny blade.

That's when his eyes opened. Taking in the scene, Badlatch beheld my form with a look of fright. "Mary," he cried, before crumpling into a heap at my feet.

We had a game when we were coming up, I guess to break the tension. When one of us kids would whine, another would try to think of a song to match. Usually we sang to Johnny, because he was the baby and whined a lot. So in that moment, Hendrix echoed through my mind, "and the wind cried...Mary."

I bolted out the door to find McCullen, and ran right into him. “Zombie! Badlatch!” I tried to explain. McCullen, cool as a cucumber, sauntered past me into the room and knelt beside the giant. On his way, he handed me a handkerchief from his pocket without looking at me in a practiced display of automatic decorum, presumably to wipe away the blood from my nicked forehead.

McCullen calmly gained control of the catastrophic happenings with the skill of a man accustomed to zombies. His purposeful motion of rolling Badlatch onto his back, checking his neck for a pulse, and stepping away dial 911 on the landline gave me a moment to begin to feel ashamed.

“—and bring that Rookie Calhoun, he needs to recall his latest delivery.” McCullen hung up the phone and placed his hands on his hips to survey the destruction. “This happens sometimes,” he explained. I nodded, still not sure what had happened, but fairly positive that Badlatch was headed for the hospital when the paramedics arrived.

“Sometimes they come back,” McCullen shrugged, as if the dead could make the conscious decision to spring back to this life after making the journey to the afterlife. He sighed. Badlatch groaned. “Good thing you were here to prevent the wrong spirit from getting to him first.”

What? My mind reeled. What wrong spirit? The words “this happens sometimes” took on a new meaning. What happens other times, I wondered. I thought of Betty the post-mortem makeup artist working with McCullen to prepare the body, drain it of blood, the key to life. Is that why the tradition of preserving the body had gained popularity? I’d ask her over coffee sometime.

The idea of embalming as zombie prevention struck me. As if the veil had been lifted at last, I was seeing behind the Funeral Director’s curtain. Suddenly McCullen was a general on the front lines of holding back the zombie apocalypse. No wonder there were no undead out there in the cemetery digging themselves up and terrorizing the town.

So standing there in the middle of the mortuary with dried blood on my forehead where this scar is today, I had an epiphany. I began to center my stories on the true hero of zombie prevention, the mortician. My stories would forevermore include the zombies fleeing morticians wielding embalming fluid, the foil to their folly.

Those spirits I sensed out in the graveyard were lurking, just waiting for a moment to catch an un-embalmed victim unsupervised. Because, like Daddy used to say when we passed the graveyard, “that’s where the dead people live.”

Well not on that day. No, we’d fought to reunite the right spirit with his body and won. Badlatch lives. OK, he’s a little less generous with his cuts of meat these days. And he has been known to toss a meat cleaver at the occasional customer who complains about it. But he’s mostly back to normal.

Badlatch’s ex-girlfriend, Mary, was the next body I examined at the mortuary that year. It was all a great mystery how she managed to trap herself in her own basement only to be gnawed to death by rats. But staring at her chewed flesh was quite inspiring. I have a clipping of the zombie fic about her predicament it if you’d like to read it. Because whoever said truth was stranger than fiction had never read one of my stories.

Smoke Ring

Marley slaps the butt of wisdom

And begs a smoke from the choking man.

From her stool, she surveys life,
Takes a drag, and nags her neighbor,

“Give me your hat, Vince, you dented it all wrong.
The dip goes along here.”

She squints as the smoke laughs its lurid,
Snaking path past her bloodshot eyes.

And Vince gropes after his prop, the
Wince of uncrowned humility playing atop

A whine, “It’s mine, I want it like I had it.”
His habit carved in pine,

So easy to indent with her talons,
Smoothing the felt, replacing benevolence spent

In misused crags of his frown.
“You need a good woman,” she narrows it down.

Reading his fear with a sniff of regret
Before stubbing out her lent cigarette,

Brushing away a phantom curl and sliding
Her legs slowly against his in the hush of his terror.

Because what he wants is a good, stiff drink
To blind his mind to memory, blink away

The gal who once touched the brim of his ego
And smoothed the lick of him on her mouth.

A snort of mocking from the corner not meant for him
Locks down his ambivalence.

“You are a puzzle, Vince.”
She spreads her hands, laying them like cards on the bar,

Empty-handed, straight flush of vanity, sanitizing
His eyes with surrender.

“You give up so easy, but what you’ve got
Locked up in there is pure gold, you’ve sold me.

“You gotta give me the key, a hint at the
Combination.” His hesitation fills her chest.

She strokes her shoulder, consoling herself,
As she feels his soul freeze, his knees buckle.

“I don’t know, Marley,” he mutters to her toes.
She closes her eyes, “You don’t want to know.

“But that’s OK, Vince, I’ve got sense enough
To play one last song and go on home.”

She scoots her jeans from the stool and
Leaves a cool wake, stirring stagnant air.

She closes in on the juke box and
Bums a dime from the bouncer draped over the neon sign.

Three good cries for a quarter, a dime buys just one.
She bites her lip and sighs before pressing the confession

Of a temptress: Willie Nelson, a man crossing the line
In dress, intention, not to mention convention.

That seals the distress. Vince will wait out the rest
Of the night alone. He, too, will go on home,

Leaving comfort for the known sour sheets
And incomplete thoughts of a man who’s grown

Narrow and cold in the safety of his jingling coins,
Mismatched socks, and sweat-sogged boots.

His head burns with what might have ignited
Within at her caress, what the mess of his life

Might have fractured into, letting in the fire
Of feeling again… The pulse of voiced pain,

The gain of laundered thoughts of a man insane
From his injuries. As he flees even the mildest degree of sympathy,

Marley saunters to his thighs, dips his hat with a tap and
Stares hard into his hazel eyes.

“If not me, let someone in,” she grins, as he places a
Trembling hand at the nape of her moist neck

And tastes the cigarette, the rum and coke, the choking
Spit of regret in her sweet mouth before jerking away in liquid anger,

The nerve twitching in his face, the stroke breaking through his consciousness.
He hears the bell, the itch of escape, but his boots stay

On the rung of his chair, and he sees her hair brushing
Her cheek. He tries to speak, but the air becomes too thick with need.

So he grasps his hand behind her head, as a tear from the sting of smoke,
Or the spring of relief,  traces her nose to her rosebud lips.

He licks this salt, eats her anguish, ingesting it, his diet not deferred--
He dines on his own often.

“Maybe two deads are better than one,” she quips. Then his lips again
Meet hers in forced risk.

She lifts his hat and flattens her curls with its damp weight,
Crawling inside his psyche to transfer

His prayers to her God. She reaches in with veteran fists
To wrestle free his dimming spirit, as faces flash before his reddened vision.

He presses against her, crumbled at last, his past fresh before
Her blinking gaze, a haze of sacrifice.

A smoke ring rises from the ashes, signaling the flash
Of change in the timbre of a worn out man’s survival.

“Strange how I can be with you,” he murmers to the drawl
Of the music and the stench of swollen consequence.

They’ll share a view of a dying star from
His roof, proof that salvation comes in a bar.

Web of Dreams

He is caught in the web

Of un-purchased dreams,

For it seems if an artist

Is to cater to his audience,

He must market to those

He cannot call friends,

Those who dine at tables

Where he is the waiter,

Where he cannot smoke

In the cigar room,

But must step out back

With the cook, chat by the

Dumpster, watching rats run.

His place outside the rat race,

Where those with means

Say he is lucky to live,

Will not give a glance

To his canvases,

For they know him as a

Servant, not a painter.

But when he finds

True like minds

In a tiny gallery

With high rent

In a location two doors

From his boss’s chic bistro,

He knows hope.

This wallspace

Becomes the place

Of dreams to him.

On a whim, he flashes

iPhone photos

Of his talent

And they nod and listen

As he watches their eyes.

This web that snared

His future, has caught

This couple, too,

Their dreams intersecting.

We can free each other,

He thinks, we can be

Who we are together.

And the art has a slow start,

But it sells to those who dine.

Until one evening,

Long after his stint

Waiting on time

And tables,

He is able to call himself

An artist.

And the couple says,

He was sent to pay the rent.

And he says, my art pays

My way.

And they become friends

For a lifetime

In a new web

Of fulfilled dreams.

Frustrated Dragon Slayer Battles…Locusts

Let’s say your empire stretches as far as the eye can see. It’s been a struggle through the years to protect it from attack, and your drawbridge opens onto an elaborate display of your stuffed dragon collection. You’ve slain them all with the sword at your waist, trusty blade of steel. You wear a few scars, but overall find yourself in vibrant health.

As you look out of your highest tower, a dark cloud can be spied in the farthest field to the East. It’s not rain, not smoke, but a cloud of locusts. They’re devouring your barley crop. There goes the ale for next year! You send out the knights to address the issue, but decide to ride with them to deal with the invasion.

After Googling insect infestation solutions, you set out, a little wary and without much experience but full of confidence. What’s a few locusts?  I’ve battled dragons and won every time! Near the field, the loud munching and flying noises unsettle you. It’s a plague of Biblical proportions, darn.

They’ve leveled the barley and are headed for the wheat. Swishing swords at them, your knights prove their incompetence. You search the skies for birds, but no luck.

According to Google, the only other predator of any merit is, of all things, the dragon. Oh, well, none in sight. No wonder, you think, touching your trusty sword.

Over the next few days, you order tents to protect the crops, but the locusts chew right through them. The villagers are out of food by Tuesday. Your castle is locked up tight by Wednesday, but those pests are infiltrating every crevice. You’re picking one out of your beer when you get an idea.

Time for a bit of entertainment! Calling together your merry players, you shove one of the stuffed dragons into the courtyard and order them to scream and run around. The knights appear and as the dead dragon begins to advance upon them, they slay him good. 

You peek out from behind the black cloth disguising your place on the catapult, where the dragon’s strings are suspended from your arms, articulating his motions. The locusts are watching, no longer munching. After a moment, they begin to form a cloud of assembly.

Flying with all their might toward the stuffed dragon, they surge. What’s up with that? You dangle the black cloth down from the catapult between the locusts and the dragon on the end of your sword and swish! They fall to the ground. The merry players stomp them beneath the cloth with a mighty, gruesome crunching.

A whoop goes up from the people, your people. No way, you think, but that crazy plan of yours actually worked! Not quite like you expected, but you did something, you worked together with the artists and improvised the destruction of the plague.

That night, as the calm and quiet meets the cloudless sky, you spy from your castle tower the silhouettes of twenty stuffed dragons guarding your empire. After a moment of reflection, you still cannot think of the moral of the story. But you thank Google, toast with the last of the ale, and survey the stragglers of the grand, impromptu celebration below.

They ate the bread and cheese, drank the ale and felt secure in the kingdom of such a clever leader. Sometimes it’s good to have a villain to remind everyone what it’s like to have their lives threatened. But only if you can kill it, of course.

Your family, like the knights, are snuggled onto their mattresses in their respective halls as you tack the black cloth to the windowsill and unfurl it down the length of the tower as a banner. The locust guts smashed into the cloth have dried into a pattern, and in the moonlight it resembles the shape of a dragon.