A Momentary Kindness

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It seems to me that compassion gets right down to the nub of what it means to be worth a shit in this world. 

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Go to them.

Hold their hand.

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Say something.

Say, “there, there.”

Just keep saying it. That’s okay.

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You got a straw? And a knife? Maybe you can perform an emergency tracheotomy and save their life. But if not, you can at least hold their hand and say, “there, there. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

Even the last thing, if that’s what it is.

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Ah, the world is peopled with heroes.  We are all of us capable.

We are all of us capable.

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Of, at least, a small compassion.

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I am the grateful beneficiary of ten thousands kinds of love. I am showered with it, though I claim to be parched and dry.

I am awash in love and so are you.

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So are we all.

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Getting It Out of Her

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This bad weather will not relent. The mood here is foul, bitter. The whites of our eyes have gone tinged with sulfur and spidery red lines. We speak and black feathers spill from our lips. If we pass too close, we leap back from the shock of blue flame that jumps the gap between our hard bodies. 

Rub our arms and move by, wordless.

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My body smells like decay. All my fluids have quit me and my eyeballs scree and clatter in their sockets. 

It hurts to look and clapping them shut is worse.

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Ah, listen to me. 

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Everwhere is the disassembly at work. Folks go to sleep in the dark and when they waken all they know and love is gone from them. What dark arts are concocting a drink for you now? You know not. 

You know not.

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Or, worse, you do and are right now downing the bitter liquid.

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How it burns going down.

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It seems the sweetness of the world has fled, and the golden light of dusk. And what tenderness has been between us. What passes for tenderness now? 

We tend to our wounds in silence.

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I make too much of it.

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Everywhere it is much worse than here. My troubles are but small. 

There is no one I need to bury, nor mourn for, nor slay, nor quit.

We are all of us in this small boat still making for shore.

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Though it seem distant.

Though the sea remain indifferent to our pleas.

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We are yet making our way.

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Namaste. 

Peace be with you. 

This my earnest prayer.

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I Will Tell You About The Time There Were All These Snakes On the Island

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My wife’s friend is having a melt-down. Her marriage is busting up and she is driving the bulldozer and weeping all the while and also singing. 

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I have taken some time off to deal with my kid who is doing bad stuff and how.

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I got a noise in my head like its a hive of bees in there. Plus smoke. 

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Do you smell burning feathers?

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There are lots of moments of happiness, still. They sprout up like weeds through the cracks in a sidewalk. Stubborn and a little bit sad. But there they are, all the same.

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We watched “Days of Heaven” the other night. I never tire of it. 

“He seen how it was. She loved the farmer.”

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In the end, we should be good. To each other, to ourselves as well.

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I’m trying.

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I

My Old Man

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Like everyone else I guess, I got a complex relationship with my old man. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe it is as simple as we pretend it is. I don’t know. 

In a world where I’m like to cut you off at the knees soon as look at you, my old man gets a free ride. He’s done his share of stupid, selfish things, but I don’t have a bone to pick with him. He’s given his love freely, and he’s been what I always wanted to be in a man. 

Whatever that means.

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My own road as a parent has been a revelation. Of the wildest, deepest, most disturbing joy. Watching the way my own shortcomings bind and wound my child. The illusion of happiness, and happiness itself.

Grief and bitterness.

Consternation.

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In the end it’s all indistinguishable from love.

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Injured No. 1

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You must refuse nothing, for you will have it all.

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In a down cycle of late. Couple of months. Lost in work, lost at home. Moments of happiness, sharp knives of beauty, and lots of chewed aluminum foil.

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I have to go off for a while and it is going to storm and we are all going to be drenched.

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Even a dark journey takes you somewhere.

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