Civthrival

February 2nd, Almost There

2012-01-29T23:41:00.001-05:00

“Source of all light,

you revealed your light.

Bless these candles.

May we who carry them

walk in the path of goodness,

and come to the light that shines forever.”

Shaman crouches in midwinter chill

as the badger, bear or groundhog

emerges from its snug den

long enough to decide to

break its fast under cloudy skies,

or retreat from sunny onslaught

to its womby den.

“The Sun reaches 15 ° Aquarius.

I light this candle and

I call upon the fire that

warms the hearth,

melts the snow,

brings the light,

and makes new life.

The fire purifies me,

Through what is now dark,

in the chill of winter.

Light nudges the seeds of

wisdom and inspiration.

Blaze of the sun,

cover me in your shining light.

I am awash in your glow.

Today I am pure.”

Water Lilies

2011-12-05T15:51:00.001-05:00

Claude Monet and Carl Krabill
sat at easels separated by an ocean of longitude and time,
describing on canvas
ripples of water and color,
cementing in a moment
a continuum from then through now.

We cannot discern the precise hues
of lake, pad, and flower.
The impressionist blurs,
so neither time nor appearance
sing their true form,
except through the mind's lens.

The raw energy Claude pushed
into the pond and its flowers
Carl holds as a mirror to
our industrial prowess,
encouraging us to forge a new path
lighting the way ahead to renewal.

(I saw a Carl Krabill painting in the halls of a company where I was interviewing 05 Dec 2011. Carl Krabill was my 7th grade art teacher, and I have studied Monet's Water Lilies at the Cleveland Museum of Art.)

Summertime Rollercoaster Ride

2011-08-09T23:32:00.003-04:00

Not even at the park,
but the car goes up and down,
round and round,
loop d loop.

The tea party over and
we sweep the floors,
empty the spitoons,
take moments to calm the dry heaves.

London is burning.
Traders scream "Oooooooo" on Wall Street.
Our sisters and brothers suffer in
Somalia, South Sudan, Iran.

Grasp the handle,
open the door
for every child,
young and young.

Careers in Transition February 19, 2011 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church

2011-02-07T23:06:00.004-05:00

Year of the Bible

2010-09-20T22:28:00.003-04:00

YOTB is a time of effort and
reflections of the peoples we've thought
we knew how to understand the myriad
begats.

Living large for a hundred years before your son is born,
and for hundreds after
really cramps the style of all the other procreators,
as much as we wish we could, too.

Whether a day is a day,
a snake is inherently evil,
or those the book says are not blessed are not
is less important than knowing
the reason for all the history
leads up to the realization that
all those around us are
my brother --
your sister,
and are due every kindness
just because they are.

Argerie's Commencement

2010-06-14T00:47:00.000-04:00

I sing your life
vibrant and strong.
You enter the fray with youthful zeal
at the time we’re all learning
achievements avoided back when
were grains of sand to
the mountains they quickly become.

You always wielded the sword of change
and now add tools to your belt,
different feathered quarrels to your quiver;
arrowheads of strategic alloys,
the mettle of which you test
with each sure shot.

My commencement speech
differs only a little from than that of Barack at West Point.
You’re our soldier of corporate skirmishes
that appear as strategic differences of opinion
but mean augmenting both the customer experience
and the shareholder value.

Seek you chaotic attacks
that rise like storm clouds on the horizon,
the lightening stilt legs of the
the great daddy long legs across the waters
the only sign that energy brews
that your plans and actions
merge into colleagues and foes
enjoying the end of the battle.

June 13, 2010

Skycasters tweets

2009-12-16T13:46:00.002-05:00

I threw the Skycasters tweet list into sidebar to test for the site...

October Ghosts Laid to Rest

2009-11-01T22:39:00.003-05:00

The scariest specter of October 31st
haunts the following day when
pumpkins and ghastlies
lose all relevance,
bloody stickers are peeled from the floor,
costumes that jollied the fey party
fall apart,
yearn for the closet,
are dismantled and stored.

North Presbyterian is to move
to a smaller, more heatable space,
the old 1880 space
with hundred year old attendance records,
stained glass rose window hidden behind locked doors,
to be sold off and probably demolished,
a relic to yesteryear,
obsolete and not worth more than memories
in a world too fast and too broke
to care.

The FPC confirmation class visited North today,
helping cook, worship, serve and clean.
The service was held in the dining room,
as the church can no longer afford heating the
sanctuary
which as many as 50 years ago was
altered to hide the stained glass
to save on heat.

The heart breaks
when the clock changes the day
and the new day brings new realities.
Leaves need to be raked,
compost needs to be churned,
prepped for winter,
the worms given warm, deep and delicious feed,
though they'll freeze anyway.

And in time we'll all freeze,
though we adjust our realities,
stave off that day,
and celebrate the saints
who work tirelessly to
hold the ghosts at bay.

EAEP: An Epithalamium April 18, 2009

2009-05-16T23:17:00.003-04:00

E, I am honored and delighted you have determined
my request for your hand in marriage merits a "yes."

I know you don't understand why I must place this in verse,
but the ages demand it be so.
Ergo:

EAEP,
enter into this place
us
that has never existed until we met,
and yet has always existed,
waiting for the time that was right.
Take my hand,
part the veil,
let us each take the hand of the one
who will accompany us to eternity.

I choose you to make this vow --
in full knowledge that other vows were tragically rent --
because I see in you a maturity
of love, and comfort, and purpose.
In the realms of sin, I see purity:
In Lust, I see Chastity
Instead of Gluttony, you show Temperance
Instead of Greed, Charity is your nature
Instead of Sloth, you ARE Diligence
Instead of Wrath, your Patience precedes you
Instead of Envy, your Kindness overflows
Instead of Pride, your Humility shines.

We have both lost loved ones since being together,
Anne and Jack and William Wise,
and our comforting each other
speaks to our love for all living things.

Like the maiden's body unknown to man,
let this vespers wedding be unsullied
by rites of spring,
history or tradition,
artifice of age,
those who think they know what lies in our heart,
women or men who would be maids,
sisters and brothers,
lest they foist upon us
gown and veil and tux and cake,
flower guy, ring maid...

And so it shall.
We hold our tongues to vow our nuptials
before God and daughter and sister and brother and
pastor and priest and organist and piper,
and elope --
willing none know 'til the email,
lest they judge, plan, whine, gnash their teeth
at lack of participation.

You seek power over your destiny
pushed from your family nest
forced to choose to thrive
beyond abusive dad
and poor dear mom.

All this I see through your bridal veil --
the face within
the girl at the core
the woman in charge
the multi-layered you
who I seek to know
and thrill to spiral with
through trial of will
scorn of the outside world --
while I touch your face the way your mother soothed.

What led me to you --
beyond the wish to grow with you
to learn networking and focus and exercise
you find so natural --
to share reading and poetry and relaxation
I find so natural --
beyond your yin to my yang --
beyond those white pants ;-)

Your gentleness with my daughter,
your love of learning and laughter,
your focus and drive for making the world
and northeast Ohio
better for the future:
closer to Eden,
closer to Godliness.

At 40 plus (spoken for myself!)
we're well within high school wishes (forever!)
but beyond high school expectations.
We know the frugality we both
crave is practiced,
humility in spades,
our respective participation
at churches parallels.
We're full of hope
love,
cope well with anger (or help the other),
and work our charity for others.

So join me at the head of the aisle
before God and our earthly witnesses
to make this partnership legal --
to sing
worship
vow
sup
and get on with nudging the world
and practice singing, "Hallelujah!"

Love,

GHL

2009-03-28T11:28:00.001-04:00

WWL March 13, 1960 to March 2, 2009
Interment March 30, 2009
United States Military Academy
West Point, New York

The Best Kept Secret

Bill,
when I stand up here
over you lying down there,
I feel breathless and unable to speak --
tongue bound against words useful and purposeful
because your departure seems evidence that
life is empty --
that someone who worked 10,000 times harder
in your 48 years
than I will ever in, praise God, 50 or 60 or 70
could --
and I refuse to believe in you throwing it all away--
be so struck in the gut by our genes.

I’ve heard of you tossing about after Dad died,
searching for meaning,
and not finding it,
and not finding it,
and not finding it,
at work,
at home,
in exercise,
in the bottle…

When you climb the mountain,
reaching the summit is disappointing
because you find that going down will actually be harder
than the ascent:
you have to face tomorrow.

In spite of Eric Idle’s
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

In spite of John Donne’s
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
… One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

In spite of Dylan Thomas’
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

I am not heartened --
In my heart of hearts I hear your voice
Saying “Why, why, why, did you…?”
Why did you what, Bill?
Who are you talking to?

Is it Dad – that boy Charles who grew into the man who would guide you in his way if not in the way you thought you needed?

Is it Mom – that girl Anne who needed the encouragement and praise her own father couldn’t reward her with, and so never knew how to show you, even though we all knew she was proudest of you, her Army man, her Microsoft man, her Seattle Dad of Charlie and Sally and Gus and Elizabeth.

Or is it some bête noir of your own, some deed that ate at you from deep within for which no grace of God could ever succor, for which you wrung your Lady Macbeth hands?

Or is it me?
The voice within me
that’s just a whisper now because I haven’t had the calamity strike
that opens the pit’s maw
into which you fell
and which lingers for us all?

Did you know that
not having searched for God,
our Uncle John calling himself
“an inactive Presbyterian for forty years,”
was probably his way of saying he didn’t know,
and he didn’t really care to ask?

I’m guessing you cared to ask.
And kept asking.
But some twist of logic
during whichever great life event
was the overpowering mountain,
the pitch dark, mind-engulfing forests,
that blinded you to the tree,
the gift,
your vibrant and growing family.

I don’t have the answer.
But I think I’ve found God’s final covenant
of everlasting and abiding love
that pierces the heaviest veil,
that penetrates the darkest valley,
that slices through the knottiest human entanglement.

Grace
is our mother’s arms,
is our father’s love.

Obituary for William Wise Landefeld, father, brother, soldier, businessman, 1960-2009

2009-03-21T13:54:00.001-04:00

William Wise Landefeld, a father of four and former Microsoft executive, died on March 2 in Seattle . He was 48. The cause was sepsis complicating a chronic illness, said his brother, Seth Landefeld.

An executive with Microsoft from 1990 to 2006, Mr. Landefeld ultimately served as Vice President, leading the sweeping redesign of the company’s commercial and public sector licensing and pricing for all products. These efforts converted Microsoft’s licensing from sale of one-time perpetual licenses to a more predictable subscription-based program – a corporate strategy that greatly increased revenues but was not without controversy among purchasers. In other roles with Microsoft, Mr. Landefeld managed international investments, directed finance in the far east, and managed business development for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Mr. Landefeld was born on March 13, 1960, in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After playing soccer and ice hockey for Shaker Heights High School, he won appointment to and graduated in 1982 from United States Military Academy (West Point), where he was Captain, H1 Company and a “star man” in the top 5% of his class. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery branch in the United States Army and earned his Army Parachutist Badge at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, thence to the Republic of Korea. Mr. Landefeld rose to the rank of Captain and was honorably discharged in 1987. He received a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 1989 from the School of Business at Stanford University.

Mr. Landefeld was active in the Seattle community and served as a member of the Board of Trustees at the Villa School, which his four children attended. He was happiest when supporting his children in their activities and was also an avid triathlete, participating in events around the US.

Mr. Landefeld is survived by his four children, Charles Raymond, Sally Hooper, August Macmillan and Elizabeth Kreher, their mother Therese Haik Landefeld, his sister Leslie Anne Landefeld Snow, brothers Alexander Macrae Landefeld, Gordon Heard Landefeld, John Hooper Landefeld, Stewart Macmillan Landefeld, and Charles Seth Landefeld, and his devoted friend Moira Katheryn Delaney.

A service to celebrate Mr. Landefeld’s life will be held at 10:00 am on March 7, 2009 at the Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle University. In lieu of flowers, gifts in his memory may be made to the Seattle Foundation, for The William Wise Landefeld Memorial Fund for Seriously Ill Veterans, supporting veterans’ healthcare, 1200 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1300, Seattle, WA 98101-3151.

Mr. Landefeld's interment will occur at the United States Military Academy cemetery, in West Point, NY, March 30, 2009.

Down But Not

2008-09-30T23:40:00.000-04:00

Out of that place,
where his and her memories
tremble and
beckon,
they push,
make the new challenge,
talk the meeting live,
cajole the customer back,
praise the office buddy
to uplift, and cherish, and seek the whole
that they left back before
that place
back there.

It will never be
the same way,
as the snowflake you eat can
never be repeated.
But after the fall, the winter,
comes the spring
with its shoots seeking
light,
and its roots
minerals
to turn water and air
into sugar and
growth.

The Quality of Their Character

2008-03-04T11:50:00.003-05:00

Hillary or Barack?

Nevermind John,
the old
white
guy
who's Republican,

(their platform:
elevate rich people and corporations
over the middle American who
shoulders the tax burden;
reduce taxes;
create crippling deficit interest payments that'll
overshadow even defense spending,
and demonize the next President who
can't avoid raising taxes for everyone)

and the patron of our President
who has botched up
lives of people
within and beyond our borders
far more than any
could have imagined.

I told a service technician this morning that
today I will go place my vote
in the March 4 Ohio primary.
I will invoke a right not unlike the citizens of Iraq or Russia, but
wholly different
as America so far enjoys --
if the highest crime and imprisonment rates of the world --
no suicide bombers
no roadside bombs
and no prospect of an authoritarian regime like
the former Soviet Union or
Iran today.

This morning I told the service technician
Stephanie Tubbs Jones considers Hillary the right person,
in light of Martin Luther King Jr.'s
voiced dream of a future time when we'll
judge a person by the quality of their character,
not by the color of their skin.

That time is today, so
this morning I told this service technician
McCain or Clinton or Obama
could be strong leaders,
and I will cast my vote for the person
I think has the highest quality
character.

Don't Sweat Intolerable Visions

2008-02-26T17:45:00.002-05:00

Progressive thinkers worldwide are aghast
that cartooning a religious figure
would be subject to
judicial censure.
And any well-meaning couple
can't get married and raise children.
And changing your mind
about your beliefs, while contrary,
isn't perfectly human.

Conservative thinkers male-wide, are aghast
that women would consider
their place to be both
in the house
and senate.
And a coat hanger isn't a perfectly
sensible way to choose.
And homophobia is even a word
(as anyone knows that LGBTs
are sick sick sick,
and just a little compassion and prayer
would return them to their roots).

Progressive thought suggests
while conservatives are a bit stiff,
no conversation
is complete
without two sides.

Conservative thought suggests
the conversation
is a monologue.

Let the conservatives battle
which of them are the apostates,
blasphemers, or heretics.
Let the rest of us

get on with progress.

Hydraulic Housefly

2007-12-31T00:37:00.000-05:00

by Gordon Landefeld

An original poetic collection in 3 parts.

Placed on this blog over several days in 2007:

Monday, December 31, 2007

Section 1: Mech Trek
Cavitations
Center I
Take Point
Rock Game
Mechku
Bong
Hammerhead Sentry

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Homeless No More
Nightmare
Creep

Section 2: Love Buzz
On the Edge
Molish the Crepit
Seven Views
Chthonic Joy
What Can I Say?
SyncoNation
Ruination
Fridge Fright
Comes a Time
Tongues Sing
Druid Girl
Forever Forty Feet
Fuzzy Logic
Be Mine
Presque Isle
Canyons

Friday, December 28, 2007

Section 3: Bugs & Trees
November’s New Shoots
Tangled
Spring Reapers
The Tale I Tell Myself
Top of the Page
Keep Walking
Cleveland Robins
Mother, May I?
Not Good Air
Recant Vintage Whine
Neverlasting Monument

Thursday, December 27, 2007
Not in Service

Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Author's notes.

Hydraulic Housefly Section 1: Mech Trek

2007-12-31T00:35:00.000-05:00

Cavitations

2007-12-31T00:34:00.000-05:00

Steel rips liquid.
Subs’ propellers vaporize water,
release bubble clouds, fingerprint of the tear,
into crushing pressure.
Each prop’s bubble buzz,
a signature,
emits sounds engineers struggle to squelch.
They may deny the sound through design,
but I must thrive through
divorce and love, despair and delight,
chasms between entropy I know and order I seek.

Only with blind faith
can I pray,
guessing somewhere someone cares.
But more the water churned
than then twisting screw,
I suppress my questions
and stiffen my back.

Center, I

2007-12-31T00:29:00.000-05:00

They leave behind
the Russian and Chinese struggles to emerge,
yet the god-state right embraces socialized healthcare.
Do fetus’ rights outweigh mothers’?
Can any mom retain the right to carry concealed?
Groggy nations don’t work,
so “all drugs legal” creates more problems than solves.
But going to jail for selling one plant
while the other can be bought at the state store
seems bizarre.
People who say “I’m licensed to thrill”
often understand AIDS,
whereas law-abiding homophobes
don’t.

Take Point

2007-12-31T00:27:00.000-05:00

Creep silently with elephantine grace to spot, to spy –
or offer fresh meat to enemy sharpshooters?
While too young to recon in Nam,
and not interested in following my sibling to the Point,
I studied long-range reconnaissance patrol tactics while in
pursuit of vicious serial commas and explosive grammar
rules editing a Mitty-style LRRP manual.

Years later, I gingerly accept orders,
discover new tricks, the proper governance,
the defectors and apostles,
create frisson, momentum, success,
deftly avoid out-of-control bureaucracy
while I recruit, deploy, pare,
never quite confident that my next review
includes a gold ring instead of a lead projectile.

I’m on Zelazny’s highway, overtaking a jalopy,
when this sleek new behemoth passes both.
Unconsciously mimicking the driver ahead, my foot bears
down, and I think of that soldier in the lead who takes,
not an enemy platoon eager to surrender but,
a bullet in the gut.

I ease up on the gas to allow the other on.

Rock Game

2007-12-31T00:23:00.000-05:00

You’ve played billiards at Earth station,
that 4 x 8 table with six pockets
and a flat slate green-felted, with firm green bumpers.
You get the balls in the pockets by thwacking
the white cue on its backside
to knock a second ball in one of the pockets.
You’ve been scammed when another plays the novice,
but after you’ve placed your credits and started the game,
plays to win.

Now take the game to the asteroids,
replace yourself with a mech team,
the table with belt space just beyond Mars.
Your cue and object balls are asteroid debris,
and you, a faint speck sunward.
You direct the mechs,
one seeking ice and carbonates,
the other silicates and sulphates.

Hear the eureka codes cross the relays,
toggle “Go.”
You roughly approve each trajectory
as the mechs push the asteroids,
though inevitably one or two
get smashed or holed by rock shrapnel.

Mechku

2007-12-31T00:21:00.000-05:00

Caterpillar truck,
black tires tall as you plus me.
Yellow beast harnessed.

Dozer blades eat dirt,
carve roads, dikes, topography.
A hundred men strong.

Via EDI,
virtual warehouses save.
Big customers smile.

Hydraulic airelons
redirect crafts’ wing air pressure.
Spirit lifts, soul soars.

O-rings stop fluid –
leak-free, environmental –
clean land and water.

Systems hydraulic,
cylinders fitted, hose, seals.
Filters purify.

Break magnetic waves.
Phones and palmtops coexist.
Old talk with new words.

Bong

2007-12-31T00:11:00.000-05:00

Shut up.
This ain’t no recording.
There won’t be a beep.
But here’s your message.

Gotta work.
And yeah, I know.
Means you sell yourself.
Can’t do business without customers.
You know? Nature the beast.
A couple more steps.
Won’t last long whoring, so if you’re on your back or taking it in the ass,
you’re doing something wrong.

Same thing with your customers.
You can’t screw ‘em.
Be straight today, tomorrow, and the day after.
And don’t take more ‘n what you sell.
No five-finger discounts,
fell-off-the-truck gimmes,
or kickbacks for closing with the right customer.

Pay your fuckin’ taxes.
Go to the pen if you don’t,
maybe get a pension if you do.

Gotta know fighting,
pen or plastic.
As long as your words don’t kill,
good words beat fists any day.

Remember the family wherever you’re from.
Your mom smacked your butt and changed your diapers.
Then she taught you how to change your kid’s diapers.
About the time your showed your kid how to change your grandkid,
you started changing your Mom’s diaper.
So don’t smack your kids too hard – it’s their choice what to do with you.

Hammerhead Sentry at Coral Cove

2007-12-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

Sun in surf refracts,
ankles flash, arms splash, cubs squeal.
Innocents at play.

Patrol Coral Cove.
Bright waters plunge into night.
Maintain balance, bright.

Watch cubs and the wild.
Glide in the shadows, hidden.
Incoming: “Qui vive?”

Hammerhead mech suit --
detect, swim swift, stop, capture.
Watch, and daily drill.

Gills in ghillie suit;
elecmechs swishing my tail;
electric odors.

Propelled munitions --
take ‘em out. Details later.
Borders safe once more.

Long before training,
future soldiers’ sunny play
mimics death with glee.

Homeless No More

2007-12-30T23:51:00.001-05:00

The bubble’s burst, and I’m free.
Or am I?
The last homeless man alive –
I’d laugh if it weren’t so damned serious.
I’m unsuited. You’re suited,
even with me behind the clean room glass.

Twenty-seven years since Hanoi June.
Bred, fed, and spread by CWRU BioMEMS Kid Cesar.
The virus to end all. It almost did: Cesar and nearly all the rest of us.
But you know that, CPD, CDC, FBI, or whatever the hell you say.
You knew its prognosis: fatigue, pulmonary distress, collapse.
But trivids notwithstanding, my ignorance was complete.
Truly homeless then – helpless – I knew nothing.

I survived to the winter solstice.
All fall my buds were dropping like hydraulic houseflies with acid in their lines.
What would you think?
Hunger, deficiency, dependency.
A hundred thousand years mortality had many faces.
A new face now.

It got me.
Thinking it pneumonia at the worst, I struggled on.
Charity sleep to Key mess to Public Square to Jack’s Flats.
Endless shuffle through November, and on into December.

Moments before and a few after are vivid.
My post between swiping Santas, I collected a few credits myself.
Symbiotic. They swiped, and I took the overflow.
At dusk, I gathered my grumbling belly, and lunged off the curb toward Jack’s.
I must have been low.
The RTA floater launched for the green and hit me square.
Had it wheels, I’d be crushed twice.
I crumpled into the dark slushy gutter.

Privileged!

Privileged?
My heart fibbing, my skull caved in, I felt the billion pin pricks.
Death treating me to acupuncture on the way?
But nanos sheathe your skin, wrest control.
Heems bore your pores, pushing oxygen.
Pins and needles.
Cardios keep the beat.
Zappers turn street crud to gold for your cells.
By the time a body bag is on its way, you’re cocooned by the weavers.
To meds, cocoons mean hope.
Bod’s warm, protected, on the mend.
No need for a bag.

No need for meds, apparently.
The milhive pulled me through the mag grate.
CDC mechs wire the med squads.
New response indicates evolved code.
Learning bugs.
After August more of my buds had been fried.
Public hysteria dictated anything odd was Hanoi June.
Break out the flame throwers.
Stand back, and let ‘em burn.
Douse the ashes with acid for good measure.

But this hive had a plan.
The phagos could eradicate the virus, but that was just the beginning.
I dropped near the grate.
Half a second, I was on radar.
Two, assessed.
Ten, secured.
Fifteen, gone.
Before a Santa could investigate the floater’s proximity sirens, only my blankets remained.

Privileged not just to be alive,
I was the evolutionary battle ground.
HJ gone, more than healing,
It took the winter before I was more than restored.
My shape, mech bone structure.
My memories, mech brain capacity and celerity.
My DNA, but a whole new mech order.
Never hungry or weak:
from a 57-year-old man, to twenty-something,
from ethnic to melting pot.
I’d look at home anywhere in the world.
No stillsuit.
No credit.
I enrolled.
Quietly grew wealth.
Milhive on the hunt.

Nightmare

2007-12-30T23:44:00.000-05:00

Freak!
Blasphemer, infidel, demon -- violate God’s temple?
Lynch ‘em! Hang ‘em high!

For centuries, might fought the egalitarian;
for decades, the civil rights leader and the conscientious;
for years, minorities.
Whom will we feed to the fearful tomorrow?

Clones staff body banks and test cosmetics.
AIs mine deep under water,
stack radioactive pallets under ground,
synthesize pharmaceuticals in orbit.
Genetically augmented girls and boys think fast, leap high, ‘path.
Platoons of cyborg dogs growl war cries,
lob grenades at cyborg bear laying mines.
Nanotechs exorcise cancer from my body,
plaque from my arteries.

Will the clones and AIs, borgs and nanos win the right to
live well – get rich – vote –
Will my grandson learn to respect the augmented?

Creep

2007-12-30T23:39:00.000-05:00

Brine swimmer,
creep out
where your brood brother crept.

Traverse the mud flat

(in your road box,
sweep, grind,
wear pressure grooves in the rock ribbon,
smooth cement’s traction grooves,
jiggle wash boards on dirt),

conquer the dirt, the air

(catch in airfoil fins
currents aloft,
harbor nourishing cargo,
swoop and repel
marauders and cancers;
learn alien flight),

forage

(glean from your mail box
documents
spreadsheets
poems
songs
unnoise
to weave your nets).

Hydraulic Housefly Section 2: Love Buzz

2007-12-30T23:37:00.001-05:00

On the Edge

2007-12-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

How often have I heard,
“Were my two favorite people to meet.”
Our youth reborn,
a seed that falls from the bough,
gets eaten, shat, mashed and buried,
germinates at DNA’s signal.

It’s also my friend’s triumph of will.
If we successfully find in each other the one we seek,
you who led us together
will forever bask in the glory of our union.
It works all the time.
Your mother, my uncle, have stories of the unlikely pairs
suggested to each other against all common sense
who found in each other that inexplicable synergy.

The great floods,
glacial moraine dam bursts from the Caspian Sea,
thousand foot walls covering the Fertile Crescent,
wiping out all life and imprinting our brainstems with
our collective terror for cataclysmic demise,
our need for the Law,
and organized renewal.

And yet how disorganized:
you with your brood, and I with mine,
drift into each others’ consciousness
trepid whether the status quo is worth destabilizing,
knowing deep down that a little more instability
may provide the vivacity we need.

Molish the Crepit

2007-12-30T23:32:00.000-05:00

Depose the deranged,
then pose the ranged.

Destroy deplorable domains,
then stroy plorable remains.

Defend a people from the degenerate autocracy,
and fend them to generate democracy.

Don’t demote those who petition to preserve us from battle –
our soldiers serve that all may debate without struggle.

Seven Views

2007-12-30T23:29:00.000-05:00

While mixing chemicals in exact proportions,
Beth said, “Gordon, I know a guy who’s looking for a roommate.”
Our goggles donned, we agreed,
spent the next year living together
and the next twenty best friends.

Your couch under me,
Samantha on top,
you walked in,
discreetly left,
but I could never have guessed,
beyond my overstepping the bounds of decency
and your lack of freedom to walk into your own room,
the new chasm.

Your mother pronounced the Chinese ideograms on
my throwing stars
Satanic.
I now understand
the pressures you struggled with
she then would have labeled evil,
though before she died
she knew and accepted.

That you found excruciating the Greyhound bus trip to Denver that I rather enjoyed
seemed as inconsequential as your complaint that I drove highways too slow.
I now include your need to camp out in the F-150’s cab
while I slept in the bed to coyote calls,
and observe since
your finer needs
your finer sensibilities
and needs of security.

That afternoon in my Murray Hill apartment –
the second bedroom my solarium,
plants arrayed on my childhood workbench,
greenery from your garden and mine –
you revealed your youthful fears that the sun
hides its face from the blossom
that closes its petals against pollination,
and rewards, with light, flowers that give up their petals
to nurture pollen into seed.
We declared our different paths
no impediment to friendship.

Straight girls complain of the scarcity of good men.
You, too, glean the fertile fields
for husband material.
How is it I, your brother, confidant, straight man,
were I partial to men,
would gladly be your man?
Perhaps as bees blind me,
your radiance dazzles them,
and they are unable to grasp harnessing your light.

“What will he do next?”
You organize,
having jousted billion-dollar health-care contracts for years,
while this lingering malaise pierces you,
conceals your ferociously-clever style from the business you love,
turns you in ever-tighter spirals in the hunt for
your gut ripper,
concern wrencher,
debilitator.
Its scent smells like your Mom’s dark angel, but looks different.
Help Dad prepare rentals, but hide from his care,
seek privacy in friends
and solace for lack of a partner.

As the 2005 bash nears, the partiers you study
will place you as Master of Ceremonies,
while you seek one angel
and wrestle with the other.

Chthonic Joy

2007-12-30T23:22:00.000-05:00

I trudge into Derryville Cemetery’s depths on business.
Draped over my shoulder like the proverbial sack of bull testicles,
my load proved his cajones testing my employer’s will too far.
Over the hill from Chesterton Church I plod with my friend
to Stuart Fen, nadir in Derry Dell.

The fen washes clean my hands of any load I offer.
I’ve brought a few. Each trip of six the chills warm me.
I love this plot of land: I don’t abuse, but use it.
But when death comes stalking, no “rest in peace” for me here.
This ancient ground wants no working stiffs.

Nameless people, yes.
The occasional grotesque suicide.
Criminals or crazies rot here.
No metamorphic angels dare spread their wings.
Swirling at my knees, the mists tempt the marsh to abandon its banks.

They trap warm breezes, blow fell breaths, suck sunshine.
Only shadows and gloom escape.
I enter. A hundred crumbling granite slabs punctuate the yard.
Stench – flatulence of flesh-rending, marrow-sucking ghouls – gags the air.
My boots squash through hair limp grass with each burdened step.

Oily saliva of unfortunates like mine permeates my soles, soaking my socks.
Necessity, I grimace.
The glistening water invites closer inspection.
Beware the sandy bottom.
I bind a headstone to my bundle and feed my business to hungry sand.

The loam gurgles eager acceptance.
My deed done, I creep back.
A “bubble, plop” turns my head, but vapors veil the water.
Sound the retreat!
I hurry when I should reason.

Fog thickens, flooding the air above my head.
Wait. Did I note this star-shaped headstone coming down?
That marble stump, or those fallen stones?
Chesterton Steeple peeps over the hill?
Ohh, no.

Only the sun weeps, seeking me.
I follow its tears, but even these are wiped away by a tissue of fog.
I stop, worry condences on my brow.
Stay calm!
Instead I flee, a phantom seeking the gates of Hell.

I stumble on a rock.
Twisting, the marsh unfolds before me.
Do I spy a trail?
Get up. Step forward, I say.
Aah, firm sand?

Two more steps, please.
What?
I try to lift my foot for a fourth, but the muck grips hard.
My forward momentum and hubris topple me.
My fen finds in me, thrashing for control, more life than any corpse.

What Can I Say?

2007-12-30T23:18:00.000-05:00

Hit the speakerphone disconnect.
Roger in London.
Jessica in Zurich.
They’re not happy about the profit margin.
I’m laughing?
Then Sam wheels in the coffee service.
A bit early for the nine o’clock, but that’s cool.
Sam looks at me, that glint of humor in his eye.
But his gaze shifts to the windows at my back and the color drains from his face, and I turn just as the windows shatter and the world explodes....

Windows on the World

Yeah. Enjoy it. Classy dining.
Black smoke tinged with flame, or blinding flame tinged with smoke.
Whatever.
Great time for a breakfast meeting.
Half of ‘em vomited my soufflé within five seconds.
Lights’re out. Elevator’s dead. Stairs blocked.
Called Ellen on my cell. Said we’d get out.
But they won’t get rescue through that smoke.
And what the hell do you think it was?

Public School No. 32

Second Grade. Al Weisenthal.
The kids are lined up ready to go in.
Hear this weird sound, then realize, it’s a plane.
The kids look up, too.
No plane ever flies this way.
Just as we all turn, one of the World Trade towers bursts into flame.
Half the kids seem to jump out of their skins, not sure what they’re seeing.
Then the wailing starts.
I can’t tell whether it’s the kids – or me.

I Laughed

We all did.
The stairwell’s crammed – everyone’s fine and walking easily.
Knowing it’s right. None of us belonged up there.
WTC One’s a candle, and the blast shook our building like a feather in a hurricane.
Now some Alexander Haig on the PA.
“Everything’s under control.
You may return to your offices.

Hatred’s Crushing Weight

“Get out!”
“What’s going on?”
“Two! Two’s coming down.”
No shit. Thuds and gunshots. Atlas shrugged.
“We gotta go!”
“But they’re still up there!”
“Captain says scram! One could come down on top of us any time!”

Got Their Wings

A tap on my shoulder.
Michael’s motioning me.
It’s time.
I whisper one more time, “Honey, I gotta go.
We’re gonna take ‘em now.
Not gonna let ‘em do it again.
Love you, too.
Take care of the kids, okay?”

Not a word

SyncoNation

2007-12-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

Terrorist, you’ve had your fun,
hugging your plastique gun,
dominoes to the blast begun,
ready to greet the holy one;
on your mark – the race is done.

Sing a ballad for the talk show host
who rouses hatred’s evil ghost,
tongue-lashes it to the whipping post,
and spears it clean for freedom’s roast.

School boy, soldier girl,
you’re on the front to dye
your face in ugly shades of green,
drive robots like games you’ve seen,
pick targets with a laser beam,
cull hearts you’ve been told are mean;
come home to your American dream.

Sing a ballad for the talk show host
who rouses hatred’s evil ghost,
tongue-lashes it to the whipping post,
and spears it clean for freedom’s roast.

Life’s too tenacious to repeal.
Rather, search for Earth’s eclectic eel,
our riches our bonds to anneal,
striving to attain Solomon’s seal,
evolving past the potter’s wheel;
outlaw the anarchic imbecile.

Sing a ballad for the talk show host
who rouses hatred’s evil ghost,
tongue-lashes it to the whipping post,
and spears it clean for freedom’s roast.

Ruination

2007-12-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

You sweated in the sauna
over whether getting to know me
may ruin me.
In hot repose,
towels draped strategically, if at all,
your cool focus on me
makes me ponder:
was it glee, fear, or resignation?

You wriggle
at holding me tight
this father newly divorced,
ready again,
respectable at work and in the community,
in the arms of a druidic priestess
schooled in worship of oak and ancient gods,
Diana of track and field,
naturist camouflaged as administrator,
fertility incarnate:
mother of lovely children.
Your might marginalizes me.

You tremble that your beauty
blinds me to your rot.
If no Una,
you’re the castle this knight rides to,
unaware of spongy foundations;
what rot there exceeds my own?
Unable to tame my woman,
steady my bed,
mine the market’s veins,
balance under debt,
slay the tax dragon, my sword rusty from disuse?

You walk ahead resigned,
the path to your door trod by
faceless men,
and I step forward.
Imagine my resignation.
You’re not my first.
Neither one young, do we separately
surrender to the gathering storm, or
join hands and jump into tomorrow,
delighting at both our squeals of fear-tinged anticipation,
our children marveling at our youthful zeal,
learning that while one life ends with divorce
another begins when you open your eyes.

Fridge Fright

2007-12-30T23:07:00.000-05:00

Last night as I dined on Doritos and sauce,
I knew my gain’s my loss.
While I don’t wish to mock true obesity,
male pattern bigness comes when I eat what I please.
“You’re so slim,” they say
though they don’t know my motto’s “diem” (like carpe).
Grown by swallow and pound,
my weak-kneed self will’s no match for the hound.
Ghostly desires haunt me by night,
trips to the fridge give me a fright –
ghoulies and witches are no competition:
the fridge’s replete with carbo perdition.
All Saint’s Day’s respite pales
as the Twinkie demon assails.
So what do I do to chase them away,
pernicious Age and Decay?
Don’t know that I can, it’s a whole friggin’ zoo,
elephants of ice cream, fudge kangaroo,
bright bottomed baboons offer up pie,
and the words to resist on my lips die.
But sometimes I find that I can be tricked
(it’s really not likely I’ll learn to be strict):
I pack some fresh veggies for trips in the car,
or walk out the door, emphasis on “far.”
I can’t expect moderation,
And abstinence’s a loon’s proposition.
But if I can get so’s the trick is the treat
Exorcising my habits’ll be a real feat.

Comes a Time

2007-12-30T23:05:00.001-05:00

In an old Ohio farmhouse, a fireplace in every room,
what peculiar scents made
Granddad Wallace race to the unfinished attic,
douse the blazing rafters,
each bucket a one-man brigade
pulled from the now-barren attic rain-fed cistern
that squats beneath the blackened wood,
and save the house his dad built,
the house his son, Don, has retired to?

Crisp granite markers,
foreground of proud if illegible limestone and sandstone forebears,
were already old when grey-haired Grace watched
my father, his brothers and cousins romp at Clear Creek Farm and the Huron cottage
in Great Uncle Herb’s 1942 home movie.
The two-year-old in that movie now enjoys his two-year-old grandsons
on the same farm.

Cutting peaches for cobbler,
I glance at my daughter steadily doing the same,
and reach back through the years for a time to come
when it takes a bucket to put out a fire,
and cousins romp in the yard,
the farmhouse, the barn, and the stream,
regardless of robots that flit through the air
or granite that has crumbled in the graveyard.

Tongues Sing

2007-12-30T23:03:00.000-05:00

Kids,
I and each
of my fifty thousand ancestors,
complained
of lessons
in forage and storage,
hunt and harvest,
rival tribe genocide,
law, parables, proverbs,
and revelations.

Each of our fifty thousand moms and dads,
across the continents
in glacial ice winds, desert sand, bay fog,
ignored our pleas for fun,
drilled us in recitations:
food recipes,
tool construction,
fish and beast capture,
medical remedies,
and burial rites.

Now while
machines talk
and pencils argue,
prophets exhort us from books.
Our legislature sings alone
to balance the need
for growth
at home
and abroad
with entropy
while glacial melt sinks coastal towns,
parched forests burn,
and marine dead zones’ amoeboid growth
drowns our benthic brethren.

Druid Girl

2007-12-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

Druid, I don’t know –
gods and goddesses abound?
Hold my hand – we’ll see.

Two ships abreast,
an e-grappling hook flies soft,
caught, pulled, and secured.

Single long and short,
independence becomes us.
Intrigued companions.

Let me look – your eyes.
Your hand holds me firm and warm.
Lips tell tales entwined.

Forever Forty Feet

2007-12-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

Black brittle slushy slick
describes today’s concoction –
and no doubt Betty’s prospects.
Her daughters have come on this wicked morning
to take her for treatment of her almost certainly terminal case.
Charles, a neighbor, and I have been recruited
to help Betty navigate the ice.
The big man opines that what ails her is caused by free radicals,
though the apartment building’s murky tap water
and funny smelling air
could have something to do with it;
observes that three other neighbors in the building had something similar,
and that there’re books you can read so you don’t have to trust your doctors.
All Betty cares to think about is the uneven ice rink outside,
her daughter’s car a forever forty feet away,
and the not so distant two weeks ago when she
walked to Heinen’s and back,
a sack in each hand,
every step strong and sure.

In a tremulous yet brave voice, Betty directs us,
“Don’t be afraid to hold me tight.”
Charles and I steady her arms
and guide her glacially down the same three steps
every other resident has so recently trod almost as slowly.
Charles thinks out loud
that walking through the snow would give us more traction,
and had we thought of it, walking through the basement and
coming up nearer the car would have been good.
Betty can’t lift her feet a half inch.
The treacherous path now seems less daunting.

Fuzzy Logic

2007-12-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

I don’t know, John, that you ever cared to search --
and I’m not sure that I am hunting now.
That stuff about your forty years as an inactive Presbyterian
seemed an easy way to say you didn’t know,
and may not have cared to.
But ever the scientist, I’m not willing to take
“I don’t care to know” for an answer.
The whole search may be fruitless, even irrelevant,
when the answer to everything just seems to be
balance self-preservation and species continuation with
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

When you get into the Ohio House, Kurt,
you may well ignore why, “With God, All Things are Possible,”
and rather petition to make the possible probable.
We’re asked to search for the womb room,
the doors to which are open wide,
the interior of which is said to be warm,
even glowing with Its supernatural presence.
When we find that womb, we’re to come inside,
protected from what ails the world,
from snipers who would pierce our quest for purity of …
but we left the womb for good the first time.
We struggle together to seek our own blessings.

I inwardly laugh when the kids look up to us
as though we know the answers.
That the universe is big, time is long, DNA complex,
and my ability to comprehend it all a sputtering candle,
is no reason to foist upon some other entity
the ability to know it all.
My loneliness, my pain, my anonymity, I share with you.
We’re both in the dark.
But for this moment, we’re the light.

Be Mine

2007-12-30T22:32:00.000-05:00

Graphic design by JSB Landefeld 2007

Presque Isle

2007-12-30T21:54:00.000-05:00

The road to Presque Isle is long,
and that’s why we’re singing this song.
It seemed like a year and a day –
that’s why it took our breath away.
It was Sunday, gray with drizzle,
and we began to whistle:

It’s hard to imagine the sand and the sun
when the driving is not much fun.
By the peak of the day
surely the sun will come.
Forever Dad and daughter
remember wet roads, hikes, and water.

Canyons

2007-12-30T21:50:00.000-05:00

The fugitive or immigrant
finds the arroyo a great
place to hide.
Avoid the snakes,
spiders, floods and thirst,
and freedom may be just ahead.

Canyon walls always loom at first,
unassailable, unscalable,
foreshortened above toward convergence,
and in the threat of flash flood,
inescapable.

I walk down between
four tiers of racked skids that rise
almost to the ceiling,
barcoded here and there,
as though crawling with
flat black millipedes.
A lift truck’s beep alerts me
as I pass in the narrow confines.
Though it won’t swerve from it’s embedded guide wire,
I might have ducked under the racks to let it pass.

It reminds me of home:
after two moves,
heir to an uncle’s departure,
and helper to Mother’s downsizing,
boxes and furniture crowd
my diminutive apartment.
A hip of shin or toe hits
a chair or bed or box
frequently.

While divorce-spawned boxes add to the confusion,
looming largest are my lovely girl,
her mother bereft of husband and normalcy,
and my search for a partner to share life’s bounty,
as I seek roots or rocks to scale the canyon walls.

Hydraulic Housefly Section 3: Bugs & Trees

2007-12-28T22:11:00.001-05:00

November’s New Shoots

2007-12-28T22:09:00.000-05:00

The windowsill begonia has outgrown its pot.
The floppy leaves brown, new leaves stay small, flowers hesitate.
Choking on the clayey, nutrient-poor, root-crammed soil,
and pushing at the pot, sap its strength.

The begonia breathes its neighbors’
pungent fragrance of moist black rich soil;
hears the pheromonal sighs of felicitous care-free flora;
yearns to extend its root tips to that nirvana.

Even as the leaves outside turn to gold,
ready to fall, and the grasses and evergreens
begin their seasonal slumber,
a nice new pot is readied.

Inverted, the begonia’s stem between strong fingers,
the smack on the pot and
the ruffling of its root pack to remove the clayey clots
momentarily shocks the begonia.

The lapse of lying pot free –
has some windowsill denizen
snatched the begonia for its lunch,
about to tear its limbs, ingest its meat, digest its wealth?

Once again those hands, swift and sure,
and – what’s this? – gentle cool pressure on the roots.
In time the new pot too will shrink. But for now,
let’s explore that delicious moist black rich soil.

Tangled

2007-12-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

1.
Cement this guy to the branch above,
swing in this puff of breeze,
next branch over looks just right.
Two more guys should do it.
Bisect the space vertically, and then across the middle.
Halve each quarter again and again, again and again,
‘til the sky has a hundred slices.
Back to the middle to start the spiral.
It’s easy at first to straddle each gap,
but then it becomes a gulf:
back up one. Walk over. Back. Repeat. Repeat.
Soon the web is done.
Sticky web, strong as steel, catch me a fly, or I may die.

2.
We knew how to spin the web:
gaze deep and penetrate the soul’s well.
Kiss long and perpetrate your desire.
Map and plot, but fight soft:
you’re both netted in what you’ve knit.

3.
Expand the last loop,
wrap the loose yarn,
spear and transfer the loop; repeat.
End of the row, switch sides; repeat.
Cut the yarn and tie on the new color.
Blue to yellow. Yellow to red.
No complications. No complexities.
To unravel, pinch the loose end and pull.
Her small fingers transfix me, her
manner quiet, forceful, and sure.
She, the tapestry of her mother and me, teaches me knitting.

4.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, / When first we practise to deceive!”1
As we hack and miserably fail to sever our Gordian knot in unholy acrimony,
our daughter struggles helplessly, snared in the snarled loops.

5.
The tangled yarn sears when pinched and pulled.
My spouse winces when I pull hers.
I curse her name when she pulls mine.
But the yarn will not free:
its rasping breath survives in our wide-eyed, unaware girl.

Spring Reapers

2007-12-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

Oh, say, can you see
over there? The farmers fly tractors and plant
quick-blooming bulbs so that, unlike the fields of Holland,
yellow and red blossoms fringed with black and speckled
white spread day and night between furrows, atop buildings,
and even way up in the air. I can’t always see them, the sky’s so thick
with soil and soot. More like the dust bowl than the breadbasket: at first
it’s sunny, then it blows sand, and when it rains, you breathe the mud the dust
turns into. The migrant workers trundle in, their weird, alien garb wrapped
up against the sun and sand and angry bees and chemical “ih-cides” that
only nurture green hidden in vaults. Odd though that the field hands
reap
with alacrity –
isn’t this Spring?
They should remove the
weeds and fertilize.
Instead, they seem to
cut and grind the weeds
and toss them back
to the soil, where,
I can only imagine,
they will quickly
choke the fields again.
Some seeds sown long
ago, their promise
dormant under a
frozen soil, the people
dying of dry chaff,
sprout now.
But can we fill
these bony bellies
on a new diet of
ground weeds mixed
with flowers that wither
the moment they bloom, nutrients spat from the soil and hurled into the air?

The Tale I Tell Myself

2007-12-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

Warm winds washed an inverted Edgewater shore,
the Lake Erie winter pack soft –
but harsh, white and endless –
and kite flyers, walkers and gawkers
trampled the mushy brown field
just as gulls and windsurfers would skim
the summer waters.
We kicked slushy snow, and marveled at
brittle elongate pencil-sized shards.

The Spring illusion lured us to the pier,
but once away from the shore,
the abrupt thermocline brought shivers,
and we zipped up against the wind.

A discarded tam o’shanter or flying disc
rested on the puddly expanse below
that looked so thick and smooth
you wondered why no one retrieved it.

I told you cautionary tales,
but a year later wonder
whether chains of frost
or abject fear of failure
rob me of the will to seek
the hat or Frisbee or friend
that will help me find summer
again.

The Top of the Page

2007-12-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

Smugly victorious,
guards its snow-swept waste,
tickles the mind,
desiccates thought,
invites terror,
confers impotence.

But snare it as title,
I tie it to the page,
force it to announce me.
My pen spears the frost.
my standard raised,
and beachhead staked,
the enemy squirms, eludes me.

A blizzard roars in my ears, blinds me.
Cold pinpricks on my outstretched hands,
intricate flakes melt to beads of water.
Already, snow curtains part and
I see a man mid-rant.
He stands at the speaker’s dais,
the throng attentive to every word.

He pauses, glances at me, and returns to his charge
as the next squall veils him,
and reveals the campsite of my north-country guide.
He lies mutilated, masticated by some beast
I vow to stalk and kill,
if only to avoid a similar fate.
Then I hear a shout. I whirl.

“Here!" Gina beckons from a light filled adit,
walls sparkling pyrite,
streaked splashes of white quartz.
She grips in her right hand a man’s arm, banded gold and platinum,
stretching out from a vein;
in her left, a pick.
She found her lode.

Mine’s not far.
I take the pick – I know the story.
For years I’ve sought to dig past white paper
and uncover conflicts that haunt me:
men, women and children captured by the bandit;
the ranger who organizes the massive global search and rescue . . ..
But vast white wastes, reams wide,
still describe the distance between the top and
the bottom of the page.

Keep Walking

2007-12-28T21:56:00.000-05:00

“Beware of mountain lions,
keep children close to you.
Biking, hiking and jogging alone not recommended.
Walking sticks can be used for defense.
If you encounter a mountain lion, shout and wave your arms.
Make yourself look as large and threatening as possible.
Do not crouch down.
Never run.
Throw sticks and stones you can reach without bending down.
Pick up small children, and keep them from panicking or running.
If the lion attacks, fight back!”

The paper-sized steel sign guards the mountain trail like a Surgeon General’s warning.

Kids wears life jackets.
Drive a car if you don’t want to motorcycle with the wind in your hair.
Pale in January and brown in August.
Give me steak, it’d better be rare.
Cincinnati and back is a one six-pack trip. Chicago, two. New York, three.

I laugh and trudge on up the trail.

Cleveland Robins

2007-12-28T21:55:00.000-05:00

Crocus blankets bloom.
Cleveland robins pull red worms.
Crows chatter in love.

"Mother, May I?"

2007-12-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

Words a child utters rote with playmates,
or to the young woman who bore, nursed, coddled, spanked;
forgotten when girding for war,
passing resolutions on tyrants,
leveling mountains for buried gold or public works,
or chastising the blood or work child.

Alone in the granite hills,
or a friend held close,
the ancient kindness mists the empty places,
a distant piper’s piobaireachd on the wind,
mournful beauty, glacial delight.
Tears moisten desiccated ducts,
soft thoughts supple broken and brambly paths.

Weakness in youth, luxury in age,
polite infuses good,
informs ruling processes,
inspires sustainable decisions:
Mother helped, as she, me,
a favor returned;
grass planted on the roof
seeks less a cooled globe
than Gaea’s blessing.

July 15 & 27, 2004

Not Good Air

2007-12-28T21:23:00.001-05:00

This air would clog my lungs
were I able to draw breath of any kind
rather than just watch Cath and Lama drift in their ether,
Jack and Chevy jaw on the implications for the world stage,
Selly mumble when he’s not ranting,
and Ms. MP watch Rel’s tlel compute meds, nav, and defense,
the holograph of their group, a faint toroid light between us.

The dim light barely glows and
glitters off the bugs that crawl all over the black matte rug
or define the rug
and tickle our scalps and nose hairs and tongues,
and which I and Selly like to crunch and spit,
the only common activity he and I share
that pulls him out of his stupor each time I do it
to wonder at me as a distant link to his brilliant past,
and then find the bug in his mouth that he crunches and spits.

The road just down from where I used to play,
the neighborhood kids and I running around,
football and capture the flag,
pretty well innocent,
along with the rest of the world,
of BEMs from outer space.
Bellaire ran on down to interstate 90,
where when I grew you’d go to get places
like the airport or downtown or west to Cedar Point.
Honey Hut was just down the way, too.
Still there for all I know,
seasonal lines of frozen milk aficionados
kids joking about each other or people they knew,
the parents half-kidding about faraway people and events.

Recant Vintage Whine

2007-12-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

As I laugh and play,
study and struggle,
impregnate and nurture,
clean and write,
read and watch,
wrinkles steal across my hands and
blonde surrenders to frost.

The Milky Way’s great arms embrace
neutrinos by the billion that ignore the froth of this comma,
dirt where new seeds germinate,
molecules of the next miraculous material, and the
black Hoover that ends all thought.

Mom grins in delight (or grimaces in simmering pain),
settling her bones in the bentwood chair as
nephew reaches up with outstretched arms, and
I propel him to greater heights.
Waves that dwarf the Pacific surf, the child
surges toward the shore, I
crash, shattering boulder against boulder, diminishing shells to sand, while
Mom recedes, pouring her fiery energy into the great dark sea.

Our nation’s great arms embrace
people by the million who ignore the froth of each other,
dirt where new seeds germinate,
molecules of the next miraculous material, and
radicals who seek to end all thought.

Diaper the young, chirping and burbling, and
we laugh because we hold a king.
Diaper the agéd, chatting and cajoling, and
we cry: the scepter he held when he wiped us
we now hold, but must relinquish before our own diapers soil.
None can know the minutiae of froth,
but spread your embrace.
Include new seeds and old trees.
Celebrate past miracles while cataloging the next.
Promote all thought.

The Neverlasting Monument

2007-12-28T21:13:00.000-05:00

Pulses all around:
my blood pushes against cell shores;
the automobile waves I surf eject waves of monoxide, soot, and tire;
Dad, I, my child, the generations,
beat ceaselessly against progress and love, entropy and fear;
he and I, throb testoronic drums of desire,
and she, the vessel, will soon wage the constant vigilance for betrayal.

I walk mid-stream and miss:
the hidden mud puppies
as I concentrate on secure footing on
the melting moss covered rocks;
the strands of water, alternating warm and cool,
tickle my ankles
and mix at turbulent intersections
as waters from the sunny north bank
wrestle the denser south bank current;
the parade of leaves, branches, logs, mud, shoots;
the trickle of soil rolling down to jump in the water,
released by millipede
pushed by mouse
shoved by growing root.

The goose spreads its wings at my approach,
hisses in ferocious display,
defends its nesting mate
with a display a quarter billion years old
that survived those deepest meteor strike winters
in which died their mammoth lizard cousins
and practically everything else on earth.
Were I interested in its meat or its eggs,
the comical display would be as a gnat in my ears.
But a nonconfrontational hunter of factory butchered steer,
I back away – save its display for more likely foes:
the fox, coyote or turtle.

Where in the waves, the stream, the bird,
the pulse of life
can I heed the lessons
to give my brood her due,
display my own defense or love,
push my community to thrive
build my pyramid to the future me
so that he may struggle
more wisely?

Not in Service

2007-12-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

The only certainty to the bus stop’s waving throng:
another bus that could pull us into its warm embrace
screams past. The bus driver, too,
knows our pain of walking toward the stop
just as the bus leaves,
to endure a half hour in the rain ‘til the next.

Absent its bright green letters,
broken or inexplicably not turned on,
the bus’ marquee didn’t warn of its status
or destination.

Each day I climb the hill to seek the secrets of the Master,
her marquee scrolls the tenets of her order,
and wait in smoky caves or under the striped pivot stone on the right,
No matter how far I climb, it’s always above,
out of sight,
embedded in my brain,
and while I twist around for a look,
it blinks and fades each time I get close.

Hydraulic Housefly

2007-12-26T18:55:00.000-05:00

Hydraulic Housefly

Hydraulic Housefly has been eight years in the making (or 17 if you want to start with “Chthonic”). I first started attending the Cleveland State University Friday Poetry Forum in the Spring of 2001, returning to a passion I’d had since my formative years, and started using poetry as catharsis for my failed marriage, and while working through my various relationships, before and since; romantic, platonic, and familial.

I also pursued poetry at this time as a way to assuage my guilt for not having worked my ass off to become the novelist I’d always wanted to be.

While published here thematically, the poems’ chronology is more like this:

Chthonic Joy -- 1991 to 2004
Be Mine -- February 3, 2001
Cleveland Robins -- March 3, 2001
Hammerhead Sentry -- March 19, 2001
Homeless No More -- April 10, 2001
What Can I Say? -- September 21, 2001
SyncoNation -- September 27, 2001
Nightmare -- January 28, 2002
Keep Walking -- August 2, 2002
Fuzzy Logic -- October 27, 2002
November’s New Shoots -- November 4, 2002
Tangled -- December 7, 2002
Recant Vintage Whine -- December 27, 2002
Cavitations -- January 22, 2003
Molish the Crepit -- February 1, 2003
Center I -- March 12, 2003
Ruination -- March 13, 2003
Spring Reapers -- March 28, 2003
Druid Girl -- Spring 2003
Take Point -- May 31, 2003
Presque Isle -- August 3, 2003
Comes a Time -- August 20, 2003
Not in Service -- September 28, 2003
Fridge Fright -- October 26, 2003
Canyons -- November 23, 2003
Top of the Page -- December 14, 2003
Forever Forty Feet -- January 27, 2004
The Tale I Tell Myself -- February 23, 2004
Rock Game -- February 29, 2004
On the Edge -- April 25, 2004
Creep -- June 27, 2004
Mother, May I? -- July 27, 2004
Mechku -- Winter 2003, Fall 2004
Seven Views -- Summer, Fall 2004
Not Good Air -- August 24, 2004
Tongues Sing -- September 26, 2004
Bong -- October 18, 2004
Neverlasting Monument -- May 23, 2004

The Poetry Forum at CSU had about a year’s hiatus (starting in December 2003), I (with Gina Tabasso) provided the faithful with an interim and subsequently successor poetry workshop at Mike O’Brien’s Bookstore on West 25th, where we continue to meet every fourth Tuesday at 6:30 pm as of this writing.

Each poem here has been workshopped at least once. While I have submitted this chapbook to a contest, and had a professional poet review it independently, and both sources opined the poems aren’t of high caliber, I, with my pedestrian pride, bring this publication to light regardless.

The title, eponymous of a line in “Homeless No More,” means more to me than a cute line. I majored in science and subsequently worked at a large manufacturer of hydraulic and pneumatic equipment, and so had an idea of how a hydraulic housefly may react to “acid in its lines.”

Readers often object to the somewhat obscure language in the first section, “Mech Trek.” While it should be rather accessible to those steeped in science, popular literature, and or otherwise open to intellectual extrapolations, I challenge you to study it, as I feel it contains depictions we’re likely to see more of as the our “brave new world” unfolds.

continuous sunrise

2006-06-13T16:06:00.000-04:00

There's pressure that I'm feelin'
And it's not all from inside.
It's in there, yeah it is,
But there's more than that comin' in
from the girl and the woman
not her mother but my lover
but her mother too I'm sure
as the support cannot stop
and yet my income has done just that
and now while I got the rainy day fund
the horizon is much closer
and the sun is shinin' brighter
and my sunscreen won't stop my face from meltin'
when the rays rip it apart.
I've got this wall built part way
but if the bricks melt in the sun
or the mortar in the rain
faster than I can gather others
I'll have to join another commune
behind another alpha
'cause I can't get the ball rollin'.
But I know there are some slopes,
they just need a little searchin'
'cause while the land is flat,
the hills start over there --
most up but some go down
where I can get it goin'.
I've heard that on your own,
sometimes it gets real dry,
then you're too busy to notice that
bizniz is good,
wind is under your wing,
and as soon as you realize it
the breeze's gone.

That the first blog post since 6/2/06 is a frenetic purposely-not-edited run-on poem somewhat evocative of eminem isn't too bad. I'm dealing with IT pretty well. I wish I could let the old team there know the good will I have for them, but counsel says to let it go. While all that's still evolving, I'm focused on G'ite, Take Point and poetics, with a healthily eager anticipation of the reinvention likely in Landmark Forum this weekend. Cool.

Poetry at West 25th St Books

2006-02-28T06:45:00.000-05:00

This evening's poetry get-together at the Bookstore on West 25th (Cleveland, Ohio; at 6:30 pm) will feature us few poets (and hopefully you) and a little Shrove Tuesday atmosphere. I made some garish necklaces, and may pick up some nosh from a local Arabian restaurant.

Join us!

Same old song spirals up the helix amidst the smoke

2005-11-01T03:34:00.000-05:00

Civthrival.

I coined this years ago after marveling at the cash the Walter Mitty survivalists pay for media milking rose-colored images of bravery and derring-do amidst blood, bullets and babies crying.

I believe, instead in a brave new world which embraces a growing life force, while constantly struggling with change, rebirth, and entropy. The chaos we wrap ourselves in kills as much as it engenders new sprouts of wonder.

I toast the good in and around us, and curse the bad -- but not too loudly, as I'm as much a part of the problem as the solution.