Spinning Disk
----------
400 pounds
I was--
Beyond the scope of reality ...
That is ...
Beyond the scope of the spinning disk
that stops at 300 pounds.
300 pounds of of visibility --
But, there I was
Beyond ... beyond ... beyond the horizon ... Gone,
Vanished from the caring...
From the fantasy --
But who cares!?
I say...
The blood has to burn with a names like Fatfish
Idiot ... Incompetent ...
as terms of gnarled endearment
Where love becomes a word ... no ... an artifact ...
a whatnot thrown upon the coffee table
in the presence of company.
josjr(2010 0125)
...
http://josjr.com
2010-11-27
2010-11-26
Snapping Beast
Snapping Beast
----------
It's hard to lift a snapping beast.
It's hard to raise a child.
It's hard to sit beside a son
There, on the other side of the front seat
Becoming almost too large to fit --
Ready to take the steering wheel.
"Hey, dad," he says, "What's that in the road?"
Through the windshield a large turtle
Clutches with helpless feet turned up.
"Let's help it," says the son.
The bridge is close, a field nearby.
Together, with a goalie stick, father and son lift
And dodge angry jaws.
The young man's muscles flex...
It's hard to lift a snapping beast.
josjr(2010 0504)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com/
----------
It's hard to lift a snapping beast.
It's hard to raise a child.
It's hard to sit beside a son
There, on the other side of the front seat
Becoming almost too large to fit --
Ready to take the steering wheel.
"Hey, dad," he says, "What's that in the road?"
Through the windshield a large turtle
Clutches with helpless feet turned up.
"Let's help it," says the son.
The bridge is close, a field nearby.
Together, with a goalie stick, father and son lift
And dodge angry jaws.
The young man's muscles flex...
It's hard to lift a snapping beast.
josjr(2010 0504)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com/
King Snake
King Snake
----------
"So, what do you remember of me," I ask my dad,
Holding the microphone in his direction.
"Well, Jim," he fidgets, fingering his chin and the glassy air
That glistens by his skin, "I just can't remember much of anything...
Working all the time and all."
I gaze into the void that he has spread out on the table...
Dark, chilled ... quivering in confusion.
A coiled landscape twists gauntly
In the shadows and I see the worry gather in the faces of parents
Breathing in the stormy night beyond the headlights.
I remember a small flood in the road --
Mud splattering brown on the windows streaked with water webs.
A house rises ...
And there it is ... the snake ... long as my father ...
That man, who can't remember, is chasing the night streak.
I asked if he can remember the snake he chased away.
The snake that lumbered heavily in my eyes, just below the skin.
"No, not that one...but those snakes?" he lilted into a question, "they're called King snakes, because they were brought here from some other country by the King ranch to kill the rattlers."
He didn't remember...exactly...
But he did remember the King snakes.
josjr(2010 0504)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com
----------
"So, what do you remember of me," I ask my dad,
Holding the microphone in his direction.
"Well, Jim," he fidgets, fingering his chin and the glassy air
That glistens by his skin, "I just can't remember much of anything...
Working all the time and all."
I gaze into the void that he has spread out on the table...
Dark, chilled ... quivering in confusion.
A coiled landscape twists gauntly
In the shadows and I see the worry gather in the faces of parents
Breathing in the stormy night beyond the headlights.
I remember a small flood in the road --
Mud splattering brown on the windows streaked with water webs.
A house rises ...
And there it is ... the snake ... long as my father ...
That man, who can't remember, is chasing the night streak.
I asked if he can remember the snake he chased away.
The snake that lumbered heavily in my eyes, just below the skin.
"No, not that one...but those snakes?" he lilted into a question, "they're called King snakes, because they were brought here from some other country by the King ranch to kill the rattlers."
He didn't remember...exactly...
But he did remember the King snakes.
josjr(2010 0504)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com
2010-11-25
Hey, Dad!
Hey, Dad!
---------
I saw you through the plate glass window at Lori's, on the corner
of Cleveland and Buford streets.
At least I thought it might be you-- your shape--the way you stand--that wild tangle of hair--
But the chances were slim since you said "I am uncomfortable because of time
gone by."
Then there were the street crossings
to avoid me on the other side --
The times you vanished in the bookstore as I walked in --
Your face covered with hair like an infant--out of sight--invisible--
But I saw you --- anyway --- through the bouquet --
Your face hidden in red and fear --
How does a father become so trivial ... so sinister ... so discard-able ... ?
Sure, the divorce ... a sun-baked prairie of distance --
Now a decade
And there you are, waiting for a light to turn ...
Do I step out? ... become the beast that barges from a savage, dark wood?
Do I wait for you to pass by ... another decade slipping through?
I step into the light and approach the curb, watching the signal ...
Will you reveal some truth? ... acknowledge?
Retreat or hide? ... scamper to the thicket of streets and cars?
You pass by -- oblivious -- no evasion -- no fear --
I watch your form from the back grow small a block away -- I turn to face the
rest of my day ... puzzled ... perhaps relieved ...
As I descended the steps into the student center a voice breaks out from the sky somewhere:
"Dad! ... Jim! ... Dad!"
I turn with weak, tired eyes and stare into a glaring sun
and the silhouette of a young woman.
--it is you --
"Hi," I say. -- "Hi," you respond ...
I can't figure out why you would run -- not walk -- two blocks to reach me in this way --
It was a short conversation ... a few phrases exchanged ... you asked about my walking stick,
then you say -- "Just because we don't talk, doesn't mean I don't think about you ..."
Then you are gone or I am gone maybe I am not even there.
All I can do was watch you, once a again growing small growing distant
obscure ...
josjr(2010 0127)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com
---------
I saw you through the plate glass window at Lori's, on the corner
of Cleveland and Buford streets.
At least I thought it might be you-- your shape--the way you stand--that wild tangle of hair--
But the chances were slim since you said "I am uncomfortable because of time
gone by."
Then there were the street crossings
to avoid me on the other side --
The times you vanished in the bookstore as I walked in --
Your face covered with hair like an infant--out of sight--invisible--
But I saw you --- anyway --- through the bouquet --
Your face hidden in red and fear --
How does a father become so trivial ... so sinister ... so discard-able ... ?
Sure, the divorce ... a sun-baked prairie of distance --
Now a decade
And there you are, waiting for a light to turn ...
Do I step out? ... become the beast that barges from a savage, dark wood?
Do I wait for you to pass by ... another decade slipping through?
I step into the light and approach the curb, watching the signal ...
Will you reveal some truth? ... acknowledge?
Retreat or hide? ... scamper to the thicket of streets and cars?
You pass by -- oblivious -- no evasion -- no fear --
I watch your form from the back grow small a block away -- I turn to face the
rest of my day ... puzzled ... perhaps relieved ...
As I descended the steps into the student center a voice breaks out from the sky somewhere:
"Dad! ... Jim! ... Dad!"
I turn with weak, tired eyes and stare into a glaring sun
and the silhouette of a young woman.
--it is you --
"Hi," I say. -- "Hi," you respond ...
I can't figure out why you would run -- not walk -- two blocks to reach me in this way --
It was a short conversation ... a few phrases exchanged ... you asked about my walking stick,
then you say -- "Just because we don't talk, doesn't mean I don't think about you ..."
Then you are gone or I am gone maybe I am not even there.
All I can do was watch you, once a again growing small growing distant
obscure ...
josjr(2010 0127)
http://www.facebook.com/josjr69
http://josjr.com
2010-11-14
Satin Doll
Satin Doll
---------
1968 was the year of love
and war
and mini-skirts
"showing the world
everything they've got,"
said my mother of girls
wearing those mini-skirts,
as though that was all
"they've got."
Television was filled with
body counts
and domino theories
--we boys,
not long from the draft call,
had queasy thoughts
of strategies:
--college (if you can get in)
--natiional guard (one step above draft dodging-all filled)
--air force (no ground combat [long waiting list])
--coast guard (stay in U.S. waters)
--navy (you stay off shore)
--marines (you're toast)
--army (you're double toast)
--running away to Canada
--becoming a carney...
but for me, it was yet another
move,
this time
from Connell, Washington
--where
potatoes and alfalfa
put food on the table
---
to Richland, Washington
--
where _nuclear_ power
was the answer to everything,
---
where a floor mural of a bomb
decoreates the main entrance
to Columbia High School
in Richland
---
where a mushroom cloud serves as a backdrop
for team logos
---
as the school's only bass trombone player,
new at the school that Fall,
i was asked to
scrape the bottom
of the brass
in the stage band,
a role that I adored ...
... just grubbing for the biggest,
baddest
dirty gliss that I could find
at the base of any
chord
--there was no place
I would have rather been
at that particular time
and place
between stage band,
swing choir,
concert choir
and concert band
it was a year of music
a place where i
could shrink away from
the death tolls,
the propaganda
and the forty mile trek
past Rattlesnake mountain
into the heart
of the Hanford
nuclear reservation
--where reactors go to
live and breed and die
a slow plutonium death--
(that helped make
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
household names)
that's where my mother
taught at a one room school
on the Columbia river
by the Vernita toll bridge,
surrounded by rows of stumps
from orchards cut down to make
way for the Manhattan Project
---
because of the distance
from home to school
I had to stay with people
in town for concerts
and special events ...
one of which was a weekend
fund raising telethon
that the Columbia High School
stage band and other groups
were scheduled to perform at
---
that time,
I stayed with the band
director,
a man who loved jazz
and loved the big sound
I could
coax,
--no, drag--
--rather, coerce--
from my bass trombone ...
on the way to the televison
studio where the telethon
was being broadcast,
we picked up a darkhaired
girl
i always liked ...
she sang in the choir ... i
--I was terrified of her --
at seventeen, i still hadn't
figured out how to navigate those
waters ...
it would become life-long
struggle ...
but on that Saturday night,
the three of us arrived at the studio
past midnight ...
it was a bit early and there
were groups from
Kinnewick and Pasco
scheduled to go first
so there it was ...
the studio ..
the cameras ...
the bright lights
a young man marvels at
--but there was no band.
Pasco's stage
band was scheduled
to perform,
but we were staring at
an empty soundstage
and on the monitor
it was announced that Pasco's
schools could not perform
on the "Sabbath" ...
however ...
the media voice said,
"through the _magic_
of _videotape_"
the Pasco High School
stage band would perform
and then the image
of their vocalist
filled the monitor,
with the sound stage we
were staring at in the background,
but on the monitor,
there was a band,
a conductor
and (of course) the music
rising up from instruments
---
the dark-haired girl and i were
dumbfounded ...
how could it be ...
there was the stage
in from of us ... _empty_!
...yet...
there was the band,
on screen,
in the air,
inside television sets
throughout the Tri-Cities
...
we had never seen anything like
it before ...
it defied all logic ...
it just didn't seem possible,
we just had to agree,
that it was _magic_ ...
it was
--so
appropriate that
the music coming from the
empty stage,
from the velvet-voiced singer
from somewhere
that ghosts inhabit
mysteriously, were
the
smooth sounds
of Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll":
--Gigarette holder,
--which wigs me,
--Over her shoulder,
--she digs me
--Out cattin'
--that Satin Doll.
josjr (2010 1114)
---------
1968 was the year of love
and war
and mini-skirts
"showing the world
everything they've got,"
said my mother of girls
wearing those mini-skirts,
as though that was all
"they've got."
Television was filled with
body counts
and domino theories
--we boys,
not long from the draft call,
had queasy thoughts
of strategies:
--college (if you can get in)
--natiional guard (one step above draft dodging-all filled)
--air force (no ground combat [long waiting list])
--coast guard (stay in U.S. waters)
--navy (you stay off shore)
--marines (you're toast)
--army (you're double toast)
--running away to Canada
--becoming a carney...
but for me, it was yet another
move,
this time
from Connell, Washington
--where
potatoes and alfalfa
put food on the table
---
to Richland, Washington
--
where _nuclear_ power
was the answer to everything,
---
where a floor mural of a bomb
decoreates the main entrance
to Columbia High School
in Richland
---
where a mushroom cloud serves as a backdrop
for team logos
---
as the school's only bass trombone player,
new at the school that Fall,
i was asked to
scrape the bottom
of the brass
in the stage band,
a role that I adored ...
... just grubbing for the biggest,
baddest
dirty gliss that I could find
at the base of any
chord
--there was no place
I would have rather been
at that particular time
and place
between stage band,
swing choir,
concert choir
and concert band
it was a year of music
a place where i
could shrink away from
the death tolls,
the propaganda
and the forty mile trek
past Rattlesnake mountain
into the heart
of the Hanford
nuclear reservation
--where reactors go to
live and breed and die
a slow plutonium death--
(that helped make
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
household names)
that's where my mother
taught at a one room school
on the Columbia river
by the Vernita toll bridge,
surrounded by rows of stumps
from orchards cut down to make
way for the Manhattan Project
---
because of the distance
from home to school
I had to stay with people
in town for concerts
and special events ...
one of which was a weekend
fund raising telethon
that the Columbia High School
stage band and other groups
were scheduled to perform at
---
that time,
I stayed with the band
director,
a man who loved jazz
and loved the big sound
I could
coax,
--no, drag--
--rather, coerce--
from my bass trombone ...
on the way to the televison
studio where the telethon
was being broadcast,
we picked up a darkhaired
girl
i always liked ...
she sang in the choir ... i
--I was terrified of her --
at seventeen, i still hadn't
figured out how to navigate those
waters ...
it would become life-long
struggle ...
but on that Saturday night,
the three of us arrived at the studio
past midnight ...
it was a bit early and there
were groups from
Kinnewick and Pasco
scheduled to go first
so there it was ...
the studio ..
the cameras ...
the bright lights
a young man marvels at
--but there was no band.
Pasco's stage
band was scheduled
to perform,
but we were staring at
an empty soundstage
and on the monitor
it was announced that Pasco's
schools could not perform
on the "Sabbath" ...
however ...
the media voice said,
"through the _magic_
of _videotape_"
the Pasco High School
stage band would perform
and then the image
of their vocalist
filled the monitor,
with the sound stage we
were staring at in the background,
but on the monitor,
there was a band,
a conductor
and (of course) the music
rising up from instruments
---
the dark-haired girl and i were
dumbfounded ...
how could it be ...
there was the stage
in from of us ... _empty_!
...yet...
there was the band,
on screen,
in the air,
inside television sets
throughout the Tri-Cities
...
we had never seen anything like
it before ...
it defied all logic ...
it just didn't seem possible,
we just had to agree,
that it was _magic_ ...
it was
--so
appropriate that
the music coming from the
empty stage,
from the velvet-voiced singer
from somewhere
that ghosts inhabit
mysteriously, were
the
smooth sounds
of Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll":
--Gigarette holder,
--which wigs me,
--Over her shoulder,
--she digs me
--Out cattin'
--that Satin Doll.
josjr (2010 1114)
Nonrenewal
Nonrenewal
---------
a student worker
said--
casually--
"why don't you just
retire?"
when I received my
non-renewal of appointment
from the university ...
a simple statment.
a simple observation.
a simple conclusion.
a simple solution.
--to a problem
that was far to complex
and
obscure
for such clarity.
is that how youth
really is,
confident
that the sun will rise ...
that the dew will accumulate
upon the grass
and that the mississippi
will reach the gulf of mexico?
i guess the problem
--for me--
is the word
"retire"
to think about it
is like eating
a handlefull of dried
alfalfa,
a musty mix
of fiber and countryside ...
am i ready to
tread down such a path?
--is it the driveway
to the rendering plant?
--is it a path
to new adventures
with one less eye,
a lot of worn tread
and too many tecnologies
dripping off
and puddling around my feet?
the old burr oak across the street
stands firm,
but leafless--
the mississippi doesn't
really care,
its silt slides down the gullet
of a nation
yielding to yet another
shift in the tectonic plates
of history,
buckling and snapping
like dusty straw
spread out upon the floor
of barn stalls.
maybe the student
meant
re...tire...
get a new set of wheels
---
i raise a magnifying glass
to the computer screen to see
if what i've written
matches
what I've thought
and i think of the young
woman at the coop
packing my grocery bags.
I am in awe
at how those
fingers and eyes
move so deftly,
with ease,
speed
and
tranquility ...
I string my left arm
through the straps
and prepare for the
two block walk
back home
turning away from the cashier
i hear a woman wearing a
hijab and a long,
dark, flowing dress
yell out:
"sir!"
she's holding my walking stick
and smiling ...
she's the same woman
who has walked with me
--at times--
past the
east seward tower
and shouts words of caution
when i'm on the verge of
colliding with signpost
that somehow
materialized,
right there,
in front of me...
josjr (2010 1114) ...
http://josjr.com
---------
a student worker
said--
casually--
"why don't you just
retire?"
when I received my
non-renewal of appointment
from the university ...
a simple statment.
a simple observation.
a simple conclusion.
a simple solution.
--to a problem
that was far to complex
and
obscure
for such clarity.
is that how youth
really is,
confident
that the sun will rise ...
that the dew will accumulate
upon the grass
and that the mississippi
will reach the gulf of mexico?
i guess the problem
--for me--
is the word
"retire"
to think about it
is like eating
a handlefull of dried
alfalfa,
a musty mix
of fiber and countryside ...
am i ready to
tread down such a path?
--is it the driveway
to the rendering plant?
--is it a path
to new adventures
with one less eye,
a lot of worn tread
and too many tecnologies
dripping off
and puddling around my feet?
the old burr oak across the street
stands firm,
but leafless--
the mississippi doesn't
really care,
its silt slides down the gullet
of a nation
yielding to yet another
shift in the tectonic plates
of history,
buckling and snapping
like dusty straw
spread out upon the floor
of barn stalls.
maybe the student
meant
re...tire...
get a new set of wheels
---
i raise a magnifying glass
to the computer screen to see
if what i've written
matches
what I've thought
and i think of the young
woman at the coop
packing my grocery bags.
I am in awe
at how those
fingers and eyes
move so deftly,
with ease,
speed
and
tranquility ...
I string my left arm
through the straps
and prepare for the
two block walk
back home
turning away from the cashier
i hear a woman wearing a
hijab and a long,
dark, flowing dress
yell out:
"sir!"
she's holding my walking stick
and smiling ...
she's the same woman
who has walked with me
--at times--
past the
east seward tower
and shouts words of caution
when i'm on the verge of
colliding with signpost
that somehow
materialized,
right there,
in front of me...
josjr (2010 1114) ...
http://josjr.com
The Nunnery of Poetics
The Nunnery of Poetics
(in the magic land of "ED")
---------
La Contessa
has cloistered herself
in her chambers,
a kind of nunnery of
poetics,
with her pen and quill
and Kindle--
she converses with the muses
lurking in the shadowed
fringes of her bed,
calling to her
when Il Matto
has gathered up the trays
and espresso pots,
closed the door,
and moved on to do the
morning chores ...
josjr (2010 1114) ...
http://josjr.com/
(in the magic land of "ED")
---------
La Contessa
has cloistered herself
in her chambers,
a kind of nunnery of
poetics,
with her pen and quill
and Kindle--
she converses with the muses
lurking in the shadowed
fringes of her bed,
calling to her
when Il Matto
has gathered up the trays
and espresso pots,
closed the door,
and moved on to do the
morning chores ...
josjr (2010 1114) ...
http://josjr.com/
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