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I don’t mean to sound poetic she said But you’ve got birds singing and beautiful fishes ducks. Stories of sailing storms lightning even of duckdown with orange webs below. Stories watertoward dreamslammed gently nudged closer to anarchy of spirit, that fleeting chaos. The sudden gash in minds myth of personal power when wide open world is recreated selfless and sudden rending holes in everything so unshackled spirit can hail hardstoned into the insignificance of aim. She said Movement is force using space with rhythm. Lavender anemones are incidental. Then looking at me she moved on her shoulders shaking in mirth. Still waiting for the point she asked while eclipsing. This time I slipped away with her. Quiet enough to make her thoughts my own.

Luddite

Although i don't mind being a Luddite in some ways, i don't want to become someone who refuses to learn anything new--an oldie mired in what used to be. Already so behind in technology.  Learning the arena...to post words and images...one small step into the present.  And it's time to publish pieces decades old as well as new.  What follows will be an excerpt from a truly never ending story.  It's so old that "it's been done before" came after it.

Magic Roadster: East Liverpool

Behind the wheel of the magic roadster
Razor’s edge inside my eyes
Driving
As usual, timing’s everything.
Takes on its shivering space
Feeling all over me. The real
Gets realer more real realest, really.
Falters falls dissolves.
I had no defense against the chickens.


Beginning to simmer and roil at stopping
When I had somewhere to go somewhere to be,
In the periphery of my sight,
Behind the split rail fence,
Rusty and chickeny, chickenest, chickenly,
The three of them, abrupt and erratic
As chickens are. On the green grass
On the grey day.
The roadster waited. I waited.
The day continued.


We wheeled into the ghost town around ten
For a meeting. Parked at the beheaded meter
In front of the abandoned gift shop the abandoned florist.
Clipping briskly along, into the end door, pointed to the stairs.
The heavy door opened and closed behind me.
It was my grandma’s house, the smell of her house,
And the steep stairs from her bedrooms, down.
Down carefully, around, past the huge vault door, a room.


Thick marble walls, dark wood, and hormones.
Voluptuous women; pregnant, nursing women.
Women smiling, eating cookies, talking,
In a basement room of an old bank in the ghost town,
Palpable with life, living, liveliness.
I live through it.


An OPEN sign on the ceramic museum across the street
Afterwards. Snapshots: click, crossing the street; click,
In the door; click, hello. “Watch the movie first,
I’ll turn off the air if you’re too cold.”
Alone with a history of the kilns rendered in pen sketches,
Blurred photos, someone’s memories and voice.
A river. Smoke. Horses racing to a fire. Vases bowls cups plates.
"Mind the mannequins downstairs," he reminds. Rightly. They startle.


Descending, in the humid air, past
Waxed workers in an early factory diorama assembly line.
A mirror at one end reflecting more of them
Into a long line of potters potting industriously.
A hundred year revolution, evolution of a town from
Wilderness to technology to dearth.
A couple of girls
Smoking cigarettes walk across the empty street outside.
I get back into the magic roadster for the ride home.
Timing's everything.

Humble heart is hard to claim when writing in public space.  This photo found on facebook, where i don't belong, was a reminder that images and words are now open arena.  Entering the arena with bare feet.