Writing is dangerous work writes

the novelist, toxic even.

Toxins rise to the surface of the

psyche while the writer

sits at the writing desk, pen to

paper. It is hazardous duty –

this novel writing he writes, but

alluring he seemingly

concedes – tantalizing and tasty

to flirt with the dirt

deep in one’s own soul. A bit of

a poet, he writes that the

tastiest place of the fugu fish is

nearest the poison.

Novelists sit close to the poison.

Sometimes novelists

fondle the fish dish too long, inhale too

deeply and taste the poisonous

flesh of the fish. This novelist is a

marathon runner who

sweats out the toxins after sitting at

his desk flirting with those

poisons for hours at a time. Do poets

know the danger and cozy

up only in spurts to the poisons and

then sprint away to cozy

up another day like a track athlete

running a hundred,

two hundred or four hundred

meters at a time at

most?

My wife went to see our family physician

About a clogged up nose, sinus and throat condition.

He poked and prodded and looked deep in her eye

And said, “It’s off to the allergist you must fly.”

So appointment was kept and flow meter my wife blows,

And the allergist says, “It’s off to doctor of ears, throat and nose.

Well, he prescribed Mucinex D in loads full on a boat,

And wouldn’t you know it, it cleared up her ears, nose and throat.

But now the N.S.A. sees a person of interest not her nose

And wants to know if she’s cooking up meth on our stoves.

And now my wife breathes through her nose much fresher

But the thought of the N.S.A. has raised her blood pressure.

So it was off to see our family physician

About my wife’s elevated blood pressure condition,

But as we drove into the physician’s parking lot

Two men in blue suits approached and thickened the plot.

My wife looked at me and said, “Let’s get out of this spot.

They need to legalize medical weed; I could use a few puffs of pot.”

And so we drove off into the sunset without a clue

And thankfully this saga is almost through,

Until, on down the line, the N.S.A. in future years

Concocts a meth story and ignites my wife’s fears.

Hopefully, by the future (Who knows what time?)

Possessing and smoking dope in Mich.will be just fine

As it is in sunny Colorado’s present time

With a Rocky Mountain High without a fine.

If you wish to find love, a true love, just listen

To the voice, one that comes suddenly then hasten

To the heart, to the place, trusted least, but most true,

The one place, a small space, where one finds, riches through

And through — the center, of the heart, to the nerves.

If you just, give me pause, I have limited reserves.

An old man, I have limitations, boundaries,

But you see, I’m still aiming  — to please.

It’s six-fifteen p.m. on a somewhat sleepy,

overcast, warm, early summer Sunday.

I’m sitting on my well-worn leather chair

with my feet crossed on the ottoman. The

ceiling fan lazily turns the air down my

way. It encircles my head reminding me

of a gentle breeze that cools a hot night

when slept on the back-porch of our

Chicago home when I was seven. It sinks

in that my reserved retirement, quiet even

as much as quiet is a word describing me

and my preacher life, which isn’t often, but,

then again, it is a somewhat sleepy Sunday,

is now open not only to God but the National

Security Administration, and I don’t think

I even know a single soul there.  I blog

poetry and I e-mail and I surf the web but

I don’t do Facebook for a number of reasons

including privacy concerns.  My son chuckled

at that: “They know it all, Dad.”  Turns out

he was right. I’m not sure who he was

referencing as “they,” but now I know; it’s

Big Brother, and that’s not a joke. Holy writ

indicates that the state is not there to harm

the innocent but why, I ask, must the

details of contents of  my under-ware be

stored for perpetuity somewhere in huge

computers in some obscure place in middle-

America to be examined sometime in the distant

future, perhaps, for a terrorist threat at six-fifteen

p.m. right now?  They could ask my personal

physician for my fecal sample. I would be happy

to offer them my stool to sit on.

Shoulders stooped, head

down, she walked through

the rest of retirement mostly

resentful and angry even

though she gave the impression

she was depressed and people

should feel sorry for her, really

sorry, not like the pity she had

always benevolently bestowed.

Life hadn’t turned out the way

she had controlled everything

until the cloud descended and

the pedestal moved away and

and she found herself losing

herself as she walked slowly

along the street, and then she

stopped, pulled back her shoulders,

lifted her head, saluted, advanced,

shouted aliez, parried, did a parry-

thrust, and whip-over all before

noon. He stood still and she said,

“I know you better than you know

yourself.” He had no idea what

that meant. Parry-thrust, passé,

and a bunch of others as she pride-

fully called out her moves. He simply

said, “Touche.” She smiled, spun and

marched away several inches taller.

She felt much better for a while

after the attack even though she

never scored a hit. She thought

she had. It gave her something

to live for in an otherwise hugely

disappointing retirement. He

shook his head in bewilderment

and reached into the trunk of

the car for the groceries.

He is a Native American alcoholic,

bi-polar poet, whose stories are his

God and not the Hebrew,

Christian, Muslim nor even the Native

American God or Gods – Mother Earth,

Father Sun, et. al.

He is an angry prophet mad for his

people but mad at his people, too – all of

them who have killed

themselves with booze including most of

the people in his family, clan, tribe, nation.

He reminds me of my late

friend, a German American, alcoholic, bi-

polar genius with an encyclopedic mind

and poetic voice haunted

by the suicide of his father thirty years

before my friend put a gun to his head

and pulled the trigger —

an angry Lakota, an angry German Amer-

ican from North Dakota – a lonely Native

American poetic voice for

justice, a now silent poetic, operatic voice

of exquisite beauty heard only in the hearts of

his conflicted loved ones

– the two separated only by a hair’s

breadth or more vividly a hare’s

breath on the frozen Dakota

tundra.

Are we more interested in the biography,

The life, the history, the incidents than

The work?

Are we so curious yellow and National

Inquirish?  Apparently, we want to know

About but not know.

We say we want to know. They say

Knowledge is Power; a high school

Has it as its motto,

But the fiftieth reunion revealed

That fifty years later the graduates

Don’t want to know,

In fact, they don’t even want to know

About – you. They just want to tell

You about themselves.

So, the reunion was about chatter

Bouncing off of the walls and not

At all about knowing

Or even the lesser — knowing about.

And so much for the wisdom that

comes with age.

The kid said his parents were enablers.

He wears a gray, hoody sweatshirt;

He has bangs and he just sold social

Technology for a billion plus and

He’s being interviewed on late night

T.V.  He said he gives completely

Everyday to enabling art and film

Forward whatever that means and

The enabling goes on and on. He

Seems like a wonderfully nice kid

Addressing his frustration and

Addressing his career and his legacy

At twenty-eight or maybe something

Short of that, and that’s interesting.

What will he be thinking in forty-

Years when he is sixty-eight, if he

Makes it there?  In a moment of

Candor, he did say he knows nothing

Of history. When will the ever elusive

Sophia be interviewed up close and

Personal instead of the kid with bangs

Posing as the Oracle of Delphi who

Has been enabled by his parents,

Left school and made a gazillion dollars

Overnight and brags that a former

Presidential cabinet member and professor

Who didn’t drop out of school in eighth

Grade but went on for his Ph.D. uses

That site, as if to give it credibility?

In a commercial on T.V., they’re

extolling the virtues of being able

to watch T.V. wherever you are

due to modern technology – like

in a city park where the viewer of

the T.V. missed the activities in the

park or like on the beach where

the viewer missed the water and

the horizon beyond or like the

bathing suit clad beautiful young

woman who sat on large rocks

on a seashore staring at the screen

and missed the seashore for a really

important commercial about how

you can watch T.V. wherever you

are and whatever you might be missing

of God’s glorious creation for a T.V.

commercial about really great modern

technology.

He saw a scene on T.V. and the

victim of rape, a young, minority

female in a hospital had a necklace

with a relatively small unobtrusive

cross on it, and he began to wonder

about the cross.  Some say, it means

that God’s anger against humanity

was satisfied with God committing

the ultimate infanticide by killing

off God’s son – negative, no matter

Augustine’s and Anselm’s credentials,

and then he thought about tragic,

premature death that has had him, from

time to time, in a maelstrom sucking

him down into darkness and then he

thought about standing in a small

kitchen all by himself and screaming

bloody murder and lifting his clenched

fist and arm in anger to the heavens

and then seeing, in his mind’s eye, the

cross, one that looked a lot like the one

worn by that T.V. young victim of rape

and knowing then and all these years later,

that we are loved and we will persevere.