journal – Press Send Poetry

Week 2 of Furlough Begins

Time and its relativity are clear now.

The animals and I keep a same schedule, and like them,

I believe I still matter. Hours are meaningful

Although they carry no cash.

Instead of colleagues, I converse with a cold front.

Clouds dash by at a pace I

Don’t know. Underneath, fears lap like

a flooding creek. I let them go;

tossing pieces of grass with gravity.

Time is stretched by gratitude.

I no longer rush. Let’s throw a ball

for the dog. I choose my adventures and

look up when I like.

There is space to expand and contract. To be.

We are now our own universe.

Tomorrow, a concept, just out of reach.

dreams (journal entry, 2013)

i have dreamed of him. that
figure, those eyes, a simple road passed.
and i’ve dreamed of terrible storms,
terrible choices and love love love, lost.
never had. never known.

one love i have for certain, this song, Mona Lisas
and Mad Hatters. i now dream of nothing here at 30,000 ft.
heading back to Vegas.
outside this window, whitewash, a cosmic nothingness, a limbo…

i remember returning that day
to my dying grandmother, and the first flight, the first time
i looked at the world from this height. and the first time i jumped into it.
above the white
a steady blue
above it all, Elton John sings
“and I thank the Lord for the people I have found
I thank the Lord for the people I have found”

(from the red journal, 2013)

journal excerpt "rainy day thoughts/river rock"

Mixing it up today with a random journal excerpt – this is where the previous haiku “i am a river stone” came from (sort of)… enjoy this little peek into my demented little diary.

“whatever do we do with these rainy day thoughts? saw a mystery bird today, black and white and a parrot face, puffin perhaps? cat saw many active ghosts tonight, head went bobbing side to side to side to side, her ears pricked up. riding my bike through the humid wet pavement city perfumed with that intoxicating smell of bread dough in Fells Point, i think suddenly… i am a river rock.”

journal post (man on cell phone)

anyways, later on, i do remember a weaselly man in black jeans
black t-shirt wrinkled
talking on his cell phone until he noticed me on the marble stoop
with Carl Sandburg
he paused, looking at me,
“oh i’m on a cell phone in public talking about killing someone” …
and he walked away.

feeling of a hangover (haiku)

floor hard on my bones
ceiling looks down in pity
mascara runs… runs….

the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (as written in my journal)

Not sure why I thought to look up my journal entry around the time of Katrina, but I did (maybe it’s all the reading about the BP oil disaster). And it brought back the fear and the horror and well, I thought maybe it was good if we all took a moment to remember. Tragedy, with time, is very easy to forget for those not involved. Sounds preachy, but true…

journal entry 9/1/05 12:58am

“tonight rumors
that I had lost my job
that gas stations were closed
that bodies were still
swimming in the sewage
overtaking New Orleans….
one of these is
true.”

“this is for sure an unbelievable time the unthinkable is happening – it was really only a matter of time. Katrina– cause of the flooding of a city that always meant good times always meant debauchery, laughter, the lazy life, laid back Southern style. now the streets just sewers of debris and bodies. people are dying. people are losing all sense of right and wrong. that breakdown of society that ID that can no longer be contained and the rest of us… helpless? watching mouths open. we sleep and wake to see more bad news and that gas will hit $4. only a matter of time.

we are so fortunate. so now when it is quiet we can say a silent prayer for the Gulf Coast and a secret sigh of relief that it wasn’t us. blink it could all be gone. right now, is there any other way of thinking? nah. and now i should sleep and get ready for the morning….”