WEEKLY WTF
10-07-24 Edition
Blue Moon
Blue Moon~
You escaped orbit
of course you did.
Your gravity was too great
to ever remain
a mere satellite.
But hidden fate struck you
in your excited eye
wobbling you back.
What though-
is a Moon
without its craters?
And now I……. orbit you.
Blue Moon~
In my closest ellipse,
the minor axis in which I whisper against your hospital bed,
only then does gravity
let me be content.
It’s when my trajectory stretches into the vertex
of seedy hotels
with pink doors
and beds that smell
like dead perfumed hookers,
It’s then
that I feel the lonely pull
of your gravity.
Until my orbit once again
brings me in proximity to you.
Blue Moon~
We are like magnets.
I am inexorably pulled
towards you
even while your youthful magnetism
must always repel me.
Such a strange cosmic dance.
I am your humble satellite-
until you become a comet
once again:
a raging luminescent sentence
written amongst
the paragraphs
of ancient night.
Blue Moon~
In this industrial trailer park apoapsis
I kill the sedentary moments
under a canopy of power lines
whispering to stray cats.
In Ptttttrks and Rrraowws I speak to them of you:
of the great Moon
who shot for the stars,
only to return
unexpectedly
in a larger ellipse.
Fate seems to be a cruel kind of gravity
at times.
The cats all stop
with twitching ears
frosted with street lamp light-
they seem to listen.
Blue Moon~
Isn’t it so
that to attain greater speeds through this cosmic life
one must take the time to round the fiery horn?
To circumnavigate the star
of suffering
so that one’s speed is assured?
When eclipsed behind
this suffering sun
we can only squint helplessly
at its terrible heat.
And await
your scorched emergence.
Blue Moon~
You once orbited me,
when your surface
was unpocked
by the debris field of fate.
Until you began to overheat in the parental atmosphere-
as one does.
You escaped orbit though,
of course you did.
You outshone the sun itself
even
on the cloudiest fucking day.
You will escape orbit
once again,
it is more assured than the most integral
of celestial maths.
Until then…… I will orbit you.
That Stain
I don’t think I can just sit here anymore,
staring at this stain
on the hospital floor.
Its looks suspect-
suspiciously brown.
I’m holding it in
I might fucking drown.
Suffering- she is an effective muse,
but at some point you know-
you really must choose.
Subtly suffer for your art?
Fuck all that shit
I chose a new start.
And yet here we are
I’m here once again,
the muse resurrected
from way back when.
So fucking jealous, she is,
but she gets in my head
and she writes like a whiz.
I don’t think I can just sit here anymore,
but it’s not just me
I’m sitting here for.
So yeah,
I certainly fucking will.
My cup runneth over
I try not to spill.
Its fine- I’ll sit here
all fucking day,
I won’t leave her no,
you can’t drag me away.
I sit- I’m like a coiled spring,
I launch myself
with her word or a ding.
I can sit here all day
and sit here all night,
it seems to help though-
when I can write.
This room made of ribs-
I’m a lung she’s the heart,
I am loading this cushion
with many a fart.
I’ll sit and I’ll sit-
tis’ a Dad’s worthy deed.
I’ll sit and I’ll sit
til’ there is no more need.
That floor stain though,
is it brown is it red?
I’ll sit, if necessary,
until I am dead.
Sitting & sitting I am now,
I was then.
But while I’m sitting
I’m moving my pen.
A sip of water,
a scratch on her brow.
I’ve sat for a month
I’m sitting right now.
That stain though,
it’s like- what the hell?
It keeps staring back
it might have a smell.
I almost stepped on it
with my bare sock.
I stare at the floor
like a sentient rock.
I’ve been sitting a lot-
but just sitting I’m not.
I’ll sit by my girl
til’ my ass starts to rot.
There’s not much else
that I can do,
so I’ll sit and I’ll sit
and I’ll be here for you.
Weaving
Wifey poo & I take turns. Every other night one of us sleeps rough but content next to our daughter’s hospital bed. Sweaty skin sticking to a vinyl fold down seat. We dream dreams of shaky legs walking and awaken to nurses loud talking. We wait behind a curtain for her bladder to drain and for a pill for pain. You don’t quite realize how old you are until you wake up stiff and cold as fuck in a hospital chair that’s pretending to be a bed. No drugs for you though you are not the patient here.
The other one of us reciprocates and sleeps in our trailer. Just past the border of San Jose into Santa Clara, Ca. at the Elks lodge. An industrial park. 9 trailer spots. Lots of heavy trucks rumbling, planes taking off and landing, forklifts beeping, like that. Lots of homeless folk but I’m told they stay on their side of the fence. I manage an exhausted sort of gratitude, we are not even Elks. People are kind.
On my night in the trailer I drink 5 beers. Ok maybe 6. Ok maybe…..
And yes I know about slippery slopes, I do. But I also know about waxing boards and greasing wheels and lubricating shafts- (I’m referring to axles, quit being fucking gross.) Not to worry, I’m just having a Bukowski moment is all, this too shall pass.
I go outside and lean against the front of my truck gazing upward because I half expect these light polluted cosmos to give me some sort of fucking answer. I’d settle for just a clue. I haven’t balled for a few days now. Considering I have previously only ever cried once as an adult (over a dog) you’d think that it wouldn’t be much of an issue. But I miss it already- balling that is. Balling like a baby, balling like a bitch. I am proud to have finally learned to cry, but where did it go? I can’t find it in the sky. Am I acclimated? Have I normalized this shit? I’m not ready for this to be normal, not one single bit.
The only action in an industrial park at night seems to be the stray cats. They duck under the chain link fence on my right and dart across the road into the crispy brown bushes on my left. I envy them. I don’t think they know how to mourn. I don’t think they hang onto hidden expectations. I try to speak to them, I tell them of my woes in purrs and meows but they know. They know I am not one of them. They know I am designed to be bound to mind and memory. They pause though, they do give me that grace. They freeze appearing frosted under the electrically astringent street lights and briefly gaze back at me- in pity perhaps. In their silent stare they speak to me of feline detachment even though they seem to know, I am a faithful dog attached to his Daughter. After our brief moment of meeting eyes, they slink low into the night to do cat things. I remain leaning against my truck. Burping.
I happen to notice that I am staring at a metal dumpster, you know, that good stare, that hypnotic thoughtless stare. I search myself for some kind of feeling. I’m basically in a fucking parking lot. I’m tired. Just here waiting until morning to be in proximity to my Daughters mending body. But for the life of me, this dumpster has me captivated. It might as well be a granite boulder atop a majestic peak in the high fucking Sierras- no shit.
I scan the power lines overhead. What’s the actual difference between them and a green canopy of Redwood boughs silhouetted by starlight?
The humming white glare of a street lamp- is it any less magical than the glow of the moon?
Logically I understand that these observations should be categorized as total opposites. Opposites of the typical things I love. Opposites of nature and yet strangely, I cannot seem to segregate them. The taste in my minds mouth is neither sweet nor sour. My boundary between love & hate has been shattered and broken.
When something so incredibly fucked up occurs it breaks your paradigm then it sort of swallows all of your expectations and digests both your attractions and aversions. Apparently, it’s a thing, at least for me, in that moment, planes landing and cats catting.
What’s the difference between a dumpster and a boulder? A tree or power line? A street lamp or a moon? A nostalgic home or a temporary trailer?
I can see it- It’s all in the process of categorization. It’s all- and I do mean all, as in entirely, fucking all, within the confines of our skulls. It’s the conditioned wrinkly pink meat computer that has been trained by time who determines what’s what. What’s liked and what’s hated. A broken heart blazes a terrible naked light through its many cracks exposing previously shaded aversions, it’s a unifying sort of illumination that equalizes it all- a sort of washed out grey scale reality becomes. At least in that moment, while the fellow in the trailer next to mine heroically coughs up a smokers loogie. The planes do remind me of ocean surf, the guy hacking- a sea lion.
When nothing makes any sense anymore, therein lies an opportunity to no longer be ruled by sense.
Do you know what happens when the very fabric of reality unwinds? You, by necessity, become a weaver. And a weaver weaves. A weaver can choose to remember and weave an expired woeful tale of what was and sadly compare it to what is. Or, a weaver can attempt to weave an extrapolated narrative of what shall or should be. But a masterful weaver won’t look to past patterns or hastily jump ahead to a patchwork quilt sewn of expectations. A weaver is best within form to weave only now- because now is the most vibrant tapestry of all if you simply pay attention to it, and only it.
We, weavers of reality (all of us), are given threads of light & sound, pressure & temperature through the loom of the sense organs. What we weave is up to us. We have a rainbow of photons to work from, that’s what we get. What will you weave when your threads suddenly change color? I hope you don’t have to find out it kinda sucks. But always underneath such thing lies opportunity, if you do find out then maybe do try to find that too. It’s there, pinky promise. Toodaloo.
Us
I’ve been waiting. Waiting for that moment in which I could say hopeful, happy & inspiring things about how Kristen & I are handling all of this.
I’ve been waiting for us to figure it out. To come together, united, unconditionally supporting each other. I’ve been waiting to say: “I’ve got her back and she’s got my front”, mostly because that sounds naughty and funny but also because I’ve never been a person to say downer shit. But truth is more important than platitudes.
Having your heart broken by circumstance is a very lonely and personal thing. Having your heart broken has a sort of terrible intimacy about it. It’s a forlorn intimacy though. A desperately grasping hug that has no arms. A stumbling chase that ends in a flailing and fruitless fall into a lightless void.
A heartbreak like this leaves you cold and alone- even when you’re together.
I’ve been waiting to say that we are handling this brilliantly. That we see eye to eye on the myriad tasks and forthcoming decisions to be made and that we are catching each other when we fall. But when you and your love are both simultaneously falling deep into a seemingly bottomless abyss there is nothing to grab onto except for one another and you dare not add to their weight in fear of them becoming even more noticeable to the gravity of despair and its greedily pulling hands.
I’ve realized, just in this writing, that waiting is my mistake. We are, right now, struggling- because…
of course we are.
Of course we fucking are.
We’ve been through some shit, wifey poo & I. But this right here- is some shit. This right here is SOME FUCKING SHIT. But, as I like to say: it takes a lot of shit to grow a rose bush. I have no doubt that a bloom is forthcoming but for now, the smell of shit is noxious.
I’ve been waiting for the crescendo of this song, for the crest of this wave, for the ever loving mother fucking moral of this story to say….. to say what? What is there to say? I don’t even know. We are both overwhelmed and wounded on such a deep and personal level that it is proving difficult to reach out a grasping hand to each other- because we are both still falling.
I’ve always been a runner, I’m good at it. I don’t mean actual running, not with my size 15 flat feet- fuck that. I mean I’ve always been able to just move on. To walk away without even a glance back. But when I asked Kristen to marry me so many years ago I made a very purposeful decision, a very frontal lobe decree. A resolve that proclaimed: I will no longer run.
You see, the life of a runner is often relatively easy. You don’t like a thing or person or circumstance- no problemo, adios mother fucker and off you go. But runners only ever splash around in the surf, bound to the shallows of a very particular and very deep ocean. I know, because I spent much of my youth playfully and irreverently splashing. Surf is frothy and exciting and the shallows are fun & deceptively fulfilling but on some level you know that you are missing out on an entire experiential ecosystem just beyond the shelf of responsibility down in the mysterious murk.
It’s when you commit to the deep dive of family “easy” goes away. You find yourself in the depths way out of your league and in a much bigger and dreadfully frightening food chain, the food chain of fate. You realize that you do not have full control, though you do your best to hide your little tadpoles within the reef of familiarity and stability.
For the first time, you feel fear. Not for yourself, goodness no, don’t be fucking ridiculous. You fear is for the little lives you’ve spawned in these great pressured depths. Tiny delicate lives whom you love more than you love yourself. Swimming about in this deep turbulent sea of life surrounded by so many big and toothy mouths of potentiality. You feel fate’s current tugging at you and yours- constantly. You try to temper the fear with the quietly gurgled mantra: “big teeth won’t pierce me or mine, it’s only “they” who get bitten.
It seems to me that you can either be free, or you can deeply love. To try to be both is incongruous. At least for me it seems so.
A great toothed mouth rose from the depths and took a bite. We are paying the worthy price of love. A price I would pay over and over again, just to know a single moment of its acidic ambrosia.
Although a bite has been taken, we are not consumed. Our Son has become buoyancy itself. Our Daughter, who has taken the brunt of the bite, remains very much herself as is evidenced by her ever fiery attitude and mildly disgusted side eye glances at my dumb ass jokes. My humor is my feeble light in these great and terrible oceanic depths- but it’s what I have to shine.
And wifey poo and I? Within the big blue brine of sadness there is always some sort of current- of joy, of hope. Crying often ends in laughter. There have been knowing smiles and unexpected burps of giggles. Kristen also gives me the side eye when I say inappropriate (but hilarious) shit. Though we suddenly and unexpectedly find ourselves on the bottom of this vast and wrathful ocean of love- I am hopeful that we shall rise. I could say assured or certain but I’m not sure those words exist as an active part of my vocabulary any more. I have never bullshitted here and I won’t start now. When the unthinkable thing happens to you, you realize nothing is assured and words of conjecture feel empty, like so many bubbles destined to pop. This is fucking hard on a couple, it’s tremendous, but despite that I am indeed very much resigned that we shall reach the salty air and take a grateful and gasping breath, because- that’s what we always do. We’ll just need to learn to how to breathe normally again. A new normal in thicker air that is.
There is no quick trip to the surface. No Pollyannic balloons, no satiating submarines, not even a pair of flippers for our desperately flopping hopeful feet. Because you see, to attempt to rise too rapidly from such a great depth, will give you the fucking bends.
It’s more reasonable and far more doable to mutually remain buoyant for our girl. She is paddling so valiantly and so hard. It’s easier to discern her difficult but inevitable ascension if we measure in temporal leagues, but we still applaud each hard earned meter, we cheer every damn inch.
This writing is for my Wifey Poo and I say this to you: I will do my best to calmly hold your hands in these dark & murky depths, and together I trust we will slowly rise along with the chaotic bubbles and swirls of Maisie’s effortful wake. To be captured by her current that we may, all 4 of us, meet upon the surface of this tumultuous and sometimes terrible sea of love.
But I know you’re not one for a lot of words so how about: we’ve got this sugar tits!
Every navigational decision, every error and deviation in our life’s course in addition to the unknowable current of destiny itself has brought us right here and right fucking now. I promise to keep paddling and I know you will too. A Mothers resolve is like a Leviathan in the depths, a scarred behemoth of love, a steady and unstoppable force. May we navigate by the light of the Moon until we all find an island. A paradise- called Now.
I promise a big ass umbrella drinky poo when we finally go ashore, whatever “ashore” might look like. I’ll have your back and you can get my front.
Dedicated to Miracle Maisie Mae
Toodaloo
