Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day

I light an eternal flame for our heroes, on this warrior knight. And for the spilt blood of patriotic defenders, martyred on foreign soil, someone has mourned for you & someone has penned a threnody worthy of your life. Bravo for the blind fight.



Firecracker gun
One for all and all for one
A band of brothers.


Sunday, May 16, 2010

God's Roll Call

Good versus Evil
Confess seven deadly sins
Father forgive me.

Please Note: the following is only partially based on semi-truths, meaning that only the latent message is a whole truth; however, the above haiku might be more of a reflective self-portrait. I, availed in a sunrise of beatitude, have regard on high for The Holy Trinity and what it entails. The following, written in 1st person, is only a recondite commentary because I think, in general, priorities are on the rim these days. Moral of the story -- we get lost in ourselves and lose sight; we are malnourished in an abyss of our own making and often subscribe to putrescent views. I will use myself in this story in order to avoid nailing ascetic names to crosses. I suppose I'm a bit Voltairian -- freedom of religion and all that. My intention is in no way a blasphemous or sacrilegious one. I am not consigned to a nebulous existence and I realize a stand-in will not atone for my sin. Because I signed a sacred treaty and am fully aware that the sky was overrun w/ grace when a bird said, "Sin No More."

My sin is bigger than me like spires reaching into the empyrean. It wears me like haute couture. Flashing bulbs of hellfire parading runways. Swatches of Faustian bargains and temptation sewn in my mea culpa regret. A crowd, beginning a mass confiteor, sounding like ovation judgment, waits for my confession. Which is -- I'm not Baptist, or Catholic, or Seventh Day Aventist, or Jewish, but I've stopped attending the services of church, not that I believe less or sin more, okay, maybe the latter, because I have the traits of a sinner, but I would like to think nothing major. Even though my prayers are in arrears, I like to think of it as Sin in C Minor. I mean, there are degrees of sin, right? Like a hierarchy of sinfulness? Like a scale -- on the verge of naughty, truly bad, and then pure evil? And, yes, I have to confess that I've stopped praying in lieu of writing letters & thank you cards to God; it's more my forte. Like this...

Dear God...
I know you can hear me, w/ my words of infirmity, and all the rest that they are, when I'm selfishly wanting or needing or detouring, not praising or worshipping or spreading the greatness of you. I apologize from my knees, from a devil's anvil, thru a Prayer of the Heart; I don't mean to emasculate the divinity or the omniscience in any kind of irreverent flash, like when I use your name in vain (i.e. the twenty times I might say OMG in a day), or when I commit the same sin I asked forgiveness for the night before. But I know that you know me and my modus operandi, which is not adversarial nor malicious, and thank God for that. For that, I would hope things were automatically noted but unconditionally overlooked. And you know, even though I cannot attain a reciprocal state w/ you, I think you're the King of awesome beyond all measure of awesomeness. As always, I beg your mercy, my omnific Judge. Even though I give you the littlest of attention, I embrace my innate culpability. And although I suffer from an ungoverned view at times, I know there exits a harbinger of ultimate forgiveness.

Your mostly abiding & allegiant acolyte whose recompense is yours.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Kathryn's Confetti

For mom and what I miss:

1. her sense of humor and silliness
2. her generosity and pride
3. her visits to the beautician every Friday
4. her green eyes (like me)
5. her need for speed (like me)
6. her stubborn side - how you couldn't convince her of how the ocean tides worked
7. her long stride & how she had to drive the big car
8. how Conway Twitty said "hello Darlin'" to her
9. how she would send me stamps so I'd write
10. how she borrowed my '65 Mustang (no A/C) and lost an eyebrow
11. how she loved going barefooted no matter the weather
12. her beautiful fingernails tapping on piano keys
13. her exquisite sense of style
14. how she'd nick my cross necklace (which she still has)
15. how when I got engaged she wept the entire day
16. her survival instincts - Winston fags, ice cream w/ syrup, and Hershey's w/ almonds
....................................... a string of diamonds for you!!
I love you, my bestie!!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Cinco de Mayo

A Mexican feast
Queso and guacamole
Cinco de Mayo.

France would be closer
Had they won the Puebla War
Cinco de Mayo.

Early morning as the flamenco sun broke thru a Mexican periphery of night a young American journalist lifted her head from a sticky table, made of tequila and mosaic. She felt bestirred & pinpointed as she sat under a fan w/ three blades (of slow motion). She was in the gaze of dark eyes, which made her fear her own awkward curiosity. She looked around, saw a sign painted in unabridged letters that spelled out El Sol y La Luna, which she imagined, was often full of overwhelmed ashtrays and queues of loitering bottles. She guessed it echoed live music and good radio voices too. The roof soughed w/ soft rain and she felt a pang of indifferent sensibilities. She was not at all accreted to her surroundings. Normally she, who bloviated quite freely, was outgoing, outspoken, and otherworldly. Normally she praelected an air of lucid importance. Normally she, usually in expensive perfume & diamond anklets, had a soupcon of feminine suavity about her. But here she felt exiled, alone and discredited, on the nondescript precipice of being a random loser or an erratic clown. She had disported herself on the edge of a map and now longed for the rapport of home.

The cafe was small, dimly lit and claustrophobic; it held the past of familiar locals as they bustled toward a living. She felt out of place -- irrelevant, inarticulate, and irresponsible. She tried to act normal, but she, feeling drabby & frowzy, knew she wasn't. She felt insensate and bizarre. For she had a lingering confusion, a disagreeable recollection, that stemmed from last night's feckless inebriation. She was accosted by the night and it would be some time before she could grasp tangible memories. Trying to recall the shades of last night, she wondered if she had been indulgently expressive in a good way or imperceptibly disalarming in a bad way. She, feigning an air of confidence, tried to will the feeling of order in the universe instead of listening to the troubled shadows filling her sinking calm. She wished she had been emerging from an oneiric never-never land, but she wasn't. It was strangely real and precise, her immediacy of time and place. The liminal stanzas of time held her captive and she could only envy the day before yesterday because it shone of a tailor-made and duly appointed journalist who was sent to cover a story of quixotic celebration.

Two waitresses, or tutelary goddesses, began a sympathetic discourse about their timid little docile patron because they had witnessed the inclination of night where the young American imbibed freely of nocturnal drink. They joked about sobering her up w/ burnt milk & fish ice cream. And they jested how she kept ordering empanadas de armadillo instead of empanadas de amarillo and ice cream a la ice cream. They could tell she was an incongruous outsider, because she carried a calaca tote bag w/ the hang tags still intact. And they sensed that she must've felt diminished and vulnerable in this place. They weren't mistaken; she had an inexplicable urge to amend her impromptu acts of instant gratification -- she wanted to erase the uninhibited night that fed her regrets. But she was bespoked in a futile understanding of poignant impossibility. And she hoped it had been anticlimactic but knew otherwise. She really had worshipped the rush of spontaneous impulse, hadn't she?

"Last night she was loco," the taller one said.
"Everyone's loco at night, especially under inauspicious stars."
"But she was different."
"Why do you say so," asked the shorter one.
"Because it's in the crevasses of her soul; it's in her eyes, the beguiled nostalgia."

They wondered if they should clear off the sticky table where tequila and mosaic commingled or whether they should let her sit in a refuge of uneasiness. A trio of Mariachi wearing matching charro suits leaned in the corner; they summoned the ascending notes of the sun. And in the span of a post-haste second, like birds leaving the sizeable Tule tree, the two waitresses, one taller than the other, stood before the girl. She knew she'd have to use her rudimentary Spanish on the fly; she flushed w/ embarrassment.

"I don't remember," said the young American.
"You don't have to remember," the taller one said.
"Why not?"
"Because no one remembers."
"But I should remember."
"Only the night needs to remember."
"What does it remember?"
"It remembers Cinco de Mayo," said the shorter one.

With courtesy of blood in their veins, they made her feel sorted out to an even keel. She left them an allotment of coins, which sounded like jazz on a sweaty night, as they clinked on the table. And even though she had been reckless, she was changing, in the span of a posturing sunrise, and she felt reborn and surprisingly habituated to the woman she was a day or so ago. She was no longer unaffected and the suspiciousness was slipping away, like an unsigned essay to the sea. However, she asked, apprehensively, for directions from a man w/ a toothless grin. She hoped she wasn't being duped, but still opened the front door of the sun & moon and hoped, in closing it, her cauldron of secrets would be concealed forever. It wasn't the story she had set out to get, the absence of Cinco de Mayo, for her, but she would make do w/ the long strokes of a fountain pen and parchment. And in the meantime, she succumbed to an inevitable whim to check out the leftover sights while a symphony of locusts & castanets filled the background.

As a sightseeing disciple, she passed the guild of unambitious donkeys that drank from a fountain, passed a set of misogynistic hombres whistling as she walked by, and passed the sign that said one way home. But before she crossed the boundary of tomorrow, she rebounded to a site where there existed a miasma of tradition and ritual. This place of winding corners enveloped her; she became actuated by selfish motives. It was a surreal place untouched by Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. While snacking from a cup of mango, cactus fruit & pomegranate seeds, she skirted along the craft markets where tchotchkes were a plenty and began taking an oeuvre of photos. The inbetween of buildings showcased a sepia gallery of canopies & archways. Each was a lair of time gone by. As she walked, a beautiful Mexican beauty, w/ a floral head piece, ran past while wearing a cheerfully ruffled skirt trimmed w/ ribbons and folk dancing boots. Obviously she had been dancing into next week. She paused to breathe in the aromas of Mexico as the earth moved like braille beneath her sandals and she overhead a young child and his grandfather talking.

"Why do the Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo?"
"It belongs to them more than it does us nowadays," said the old man.
"But they already have everything," said the young child.
"Americans tend to hang on to icons & symbols."
"Can we go there?"
"When would you like to go?"
"In May," said the little boy.

She knew that the little boy, that little pistol of a boy, wanted to take Cinco de Mayo back from the Americans.

With that, the intrigued journalist boasted an informal smile, stowed away her camera and notebook and knew she was well versed and humbled. With great efficacy, her trip, her story, her unexpected journey hadn't backfired at all. Although she hadn't the means to give the little boy his precious holiday back, she went to the local orphanage to donate proceeds and art (which had no silence) from Mrs. McCullen's special auction. The gesture was like imprinted leaves on a desert floor and it gave her a sense of warmth and immutable pride. As she prepared to fly back home she touched a stone wall and felt the residue of a past that wasn't hers.

On the plane home she colored the story in the pages of her journal. And she started to remember the night of Cinco de Mayo. She began to eavesdrop on how she lost herself, how she was enchanted by the gaze and dancing pulse of a dark-haired, acrylic-eyed stranger. She had the soul of a bashful wind and he was full of brio and charm. He called the indiscreet moon and it waged its consent. He became her paramour of sensual intimation. And she inhaled his whisper like an unrequited flame inhales the darkness. She fantasized how he could've been a street-chalk-artist who may've wanted to take her home to outline her feet on his bare floors. She fantasized how he regaled her w/ hues of lilac wine and tantric tricks. He had the chivalrous presence to make even the butterflies nervous. Albeit a benign fantasy, she felt the urge to mimic his kiss on the back of her hand. Or maybe she just wanted to peruse the end of a cigarette and tilt a drink to her lips. She had certainly been, without a doubt, besotted by Cinco de Mayo!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Funkabilly

The Sound of Walls