I am not, as she says, trying to trick myself into imagining

or fancying us together--- there is no trick in that:

either she is running parallel to me, or one of us

is lagging behind, out of spite, out of apathy, out of range,

ignoring the lingering within earshot, self-deafened,

imposed upon, or feeling bereft, afloat on a raft in a Martian sea.



Sometimes I try to trick the bogeymen, the white hooded

figures which lie somewhere in my occipital lobe, strangers

to flight, estranged by sleights of hands, bedeviled by mists,

or Bidwell's ghost, but with me as the spinner of a wheel,

looking out at the world, judging, reshaping, discarding

and ignoring the design, my hands shifting back & forth.



Often times, the bogeymen are like Stygian boatmen,

they stop to carry you through the darkness, sometimes quietly,

respectfully, and other times, speaking to you in low tones,

whispering the madness, in sheer, cold sentences, like steel staples.

But I've tried to look instead to my reflection, where the cold

black waters meet my face, knowing it as a mirage.



The workings of love, the love that acts, the kind you can kick

across the floor, wrestle with, stumble over on the dance floor---

force you forward, or they grind you down to a white-flag surrender.

Creating faith from uncertainty or despiar from doubt,

even so the person who shudders in its wake ultimately has

the upper hand, that no matter what the cost or how deep the scars,

there is still golden grace in the palm of the hand, once it is wished.



Sometimes love is knowing that you don't need to talk about it anymore.
To move on with the business of trying to love again.

List of things I need:

Safety or the feeling of safety, like people aren't out to screw with me, especially in the home,

esepecially with people I am trying to trust

This kind of runs chills down my spine. This poet was gifted with vision to say the least... he seems to be possessed of loneliness. I'm not sure why the lonely-hearted poets have always spoken to me so loudly. Maybe it's the same sense of being lonely in a world full of people you are so sure are unlike you, despite that delusion, despite how little that takes into account. Or maybe I just like some of the images here, the ideas. Glen Uig
by Richard Hugo
Believe in this couple this day who come to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired of giants and heroes and know they believe in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks. Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke played by those wise tiny creatures far from the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane. Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin, sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king. These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe, have lived through it all: the Viking occupation, clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War II bomber gone down, a fiery boom on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig. They remember the Viking who wandered off course, under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done. Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond, the monster is in it small as a wren. Believe the couple who have finished their picnic and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day you left home forever and the cold open way a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Perscription.

Some yoga. Exercise. Ride a bike. Make it to the YMCA.

Eat healthier. Eat a salad instead of a cookie.

I don't need to eat every cookie I see. Blood sugar.

Cool down. Be cool. Like Troy said, "You're alright

I was reading about Gustavus Swift in the 1880's the first to begin using railway cars to ship frozen meat from one city to another- hence the beginiing of meat-shipping companies and refrigerated railcars-- I'm getting to be so saturated with useless but interesting knowledge...
But what if --and how are we to doubt that it didn't happen-- employees of the slaughterhouses falling into the meat-packing refineries... shipped off to other cities and placed on the grocery store shelves or in the coolers... then some pour soul happens upon the grainy remains of the sad worker who fell into the combine... I shudder to think of it. OKay, OKay, so that's a dark thought, but it came to me. I guess there's parts of history that sort of pull you in. Others that make you yawn-- wide.

bursting sparkles
of color above our eyes,
squinting sometimes,
fingers in my ears at
the loud explosions of light.


craning my neck backward,
the light sprayed over the field,
the soft grass under my ankles,
where are you I wonder,
are you in the night or just beyond me?

the dog plants his paws,
little nails on your arm,
you pause before the notes,
and your hands carress the dog,
a ball cradled in his jaw.

Thoughts on Reconstruction. 1865-1877.

The Civil War may have ended the fighting between the North and South on proper battlefields but the war never really ended in the South even after the Battle of Gettysburg, Antietam, etc.
The real battle continued to take place in establishing the Democratic party in the South and making sure that the Republicans were scared out of their seats and the elections lost. It has been noted, too, how African Americans were intimidated out of requesting any kinds of favor or funding except from Northern Republicans or even some Democratic leaders in the South. You can imagine them going to leaders who very well may have once been slave-owners. What hell- you think you've one a victory for your people whose greatest distinction is the color of their skin and their lack of education, then you have to beg some slave owner for a little help. No doubt, they were forced to scrape by on what could be given as a hand-out, a favor...

Also, new information and new concept about the time after the war. Blacks reaped the rewards of the post- Civil War legislation for only a short period of time, but that would likely have made it worse for them- the reason being that they would still have been served by restaurants, stores, bars, hotels, street cars during the 1880's. Then comes the 1890's and suddenly, you have a recommencement of "disenfranchisement" . So they won their freedoms for awhile, earned their comfort, only to have it snatched away from them once again. Think of the fear and anxiety, believing that once again they would slip away into a depraved and deformed state of being.

The Northern Republicans even gave up on the cause of Reconsturction and ensuring back rights were upheld. We're talking about 12 years, really. 12 years to work on, policing, enforcing and ensuring that African Americans get the same kind of treatment... it took four years and thousands upon thousands killed in the war, and they have a reconstruction and change ipso facto overturned after twelve years because they can't figure out a way to make the South do what they want it to... plus nobody really wants a big federal government.