Author: admin

in her embrace

I am sometimes too overcome with lust and distance to remember that the lips I yearn for smile sweetly, speak from the mind, reason from the heart, and can be as still as ice floes waiting for a sense of the sun. In those moments of realization there is a calming sense of sorrow. No longer am I the old boy, the wanderer lost. I am left in a new place where my own lips are exposed to the elements. In her embrace I feel the cold give way to warmer waters. The ice beneath vanishes until there we float alone and count the days with a kiss at sunrise.

If this, if that

If this, if that

If every damn piece

Of future we don’t have

Could bite our ears

It’d be in charge

Like the faerie devils

That we see on shoulders

Around the way

Sitting and chatting

Away the loneliness

Screeching of little white

Lies we want to believe

While hiding

And waiting for the shit

To tumble down the hill

Well no, well no

That’s not right

To say that

If this, if that

Is what we hear

And now

You got but one

Devil waiting when

You got on your hands:

A man who knows loneliness

Had wrapped himself

Up in a cocoon

And darlin’

He’s tired

Of if

Alleluia

Alleluia

O virga mediatrix

sancta viscera tua mortem
superaverunt,
et venter tuus omnes
creaturas illuminavit
in pulchro flore de
suavissima integritate
clausi pudoris tui orto.

Alleluia.

Hildegard of Bingen: Alleluia, O virga mediatrix

—-

Our church was across from the train tracks and park on Florence Ave., a few blocks away from Market St. and Inglewood High School. We couldn’t go anywhere without driving by it. Our folks would do the cross thing every time. It was a perfectly white building for most of its history and then got switched to brown a few years before I left. That amuses me. The Jesus statue inside is still immaculate, though, as is the one of his Mother holding him when he was a baby. His wounds are probably freshened up with a coat of paint for Easter.

thoughts of beasts

My mind wanders to thoughts of beasts—felines and canines. One, equipped for precise and sharply efficient kills. The other, reliant on power and strength of its jaw. The physiology of each engineered to successfully hunt, kill, and devour. A feline’s claws wait to unsheathe. The canine’s keen eye for the weak member of the herd keeps it patient. The muscles and sinews ripple and tear across fur and skin like rivers in the sands. Single points of light in the darkness. Grunts, growls, and yowls beneath the stars. Survival of the ones who run fastest, move hardest, and rend the most flesh from the bone. They who are worthiest of nourishment, and propagation of their most holy seed.

holy

The word holy means something again. Holy, holy, holy… We can be holy, you and I. The spiritual realization is waiting. I am ready, but darlin’, are you?

The house is fallen

The house is fallen, they will say. The line is broken in spite of the three brothers who followed me out of our mother’s womb. One too frugal and bigoted, one too stubborn and conservative, one too lazy and indifferent. The house is fallen, the end is come. Our father’s passing will not bring a single tear to our mother’s eyes, our mother who taught how not to cry. And yet our father’s weak tear ducts make us human from time to time. In the end he will be buried in a local cemetery where no one else from our family lies, and where no one ever will for we will scatter and spread our willful seed across to other places on the map, each with their own cemeteries. When the house is fallen they will want to know where I am, where I have been, and in spite of all my learnings I will never have the words to say who it is I am and what it is I wanted. They will never know nor would they care to understand—the tearless mother, the pain-addled father, the brothers whose distance keeps them civil and far away. They cater to their pain, I cater to mine. When the house is fallen, there will be no one left.

elbows

My left elbow is always ashier than than my right, and I always think about this. It isn’t the vanity of it, because it’s an elbow for fuck’s sake, but the asymmetry kind of bothers me. Ashy, not ashy. What could cause this? Sleeping patterns? Leaning on one side more than the other? Diet imbalance?

Today, I was looking at photos of Cessnas and the views from the inside the cockpit. Here’s the cockpit of an older model 172:

cessna-cockpit

Ain’t that a sight?

Cessnas are my favorite. They’re small, not cumbersome, and the maneuverability is pretty good for a single engine from what I’ve been told. It reminds me of sitting in my old ‘78 Nova before I wrecked it. The one with the bench seats. It even had red interiors, just like this photo. I used to drive up and down the 405 late at night, around 2 or 3 in the morning, and listen to music on the old radio. Rock, usually. Metallica if it was a good night, back then. There were hardly any other cars and I could drive, brother, drive and drive. Just coast along with all my windows open and that V8 tearing the place up. Of all my incidents with the law, I was never caught speeding. And I’ve never been convicted of anything anyway, so who knows. I’m not going to say what you’re thinking. When I drive I like the windows open, feel the wind of each time and place, like the sea mist, the choking exhaust of the trucks near the port, the low clouds high up in the mountains. I did this in my Nova. I’ve done this in every vehicle I’ve owned. And I did this the few times I’ve flown in a Cessna. It’s got windows, and if one is inclined you can open them up and just let that wind way up there flow in, drowning out everything but the sound of your voice into the headset. Lean that elbow out the window…

So that was the moment. The realization. I always drive with my left elbow sticking out of the driver’s/pilot’s side window. Always. Rain or shine, you’ll see me with that elbow poking out of there. The right elbow just sits inside, safe from the elements.

Ashy, not ashy.

Such a beautiful process.