Jolly Christmastime

Happy Ho Ho and Merry Holiday and Jolly Christmastime to everyone. Celebrate wholly, replete w/ a plethora of joy, and may you all be blessed in the New Year. Doff the old resolutions and do something you've never done before. Something. You've never done. Before.

Peace & Mistletoe.

The Sound of Walls

Early 90's -- imagine a passionate young couple walking along a nondescript highway w/ a pair of battered guitar cases in tow. Imagine their conversations, after knowing each other's likes and dislikes for fourteen storied months. Imagine them stopping under a bridge because of the clear rain that caught them off guard. Imagine that we stop to help them because, as they sit close on a steel rail, they wear the look of harmless whimsy and are embedded in depths of funtastic love. Imagine that we talk openly and freely and w/ a commonality between us. Imagine that they even resemble us when I glimpse at them in the rearview mirror. Imagine that he's the talent and she's the spontaneity. Imagine that they stopped by for an unexpected visit last weekend. Imagine the years gone thru and the songs written, about each other and for each other. Imagine them serenading us. And imagine that I said, "Wow, I've always liked the Sound of Walls."

A New Song for Christmas

It's hard to write a new song for Christmas
it's all been said before
jingle bells and deck the halls
all that tinsel on the floor

It's hard to write a new song for Christmas
it's all been said before
Twelve days of giveaways
all that rushing to the store

All this fuss we have for the holiday
Isn't it easier to celebrate his birthday

It's hard to write a new song for Christmas
it's all been said before
stories once upon a time
all that myth and folklore

It's hard to write a new song for Christmas
it's all been said before
cards and letters written
all those wreaths on the door

It's hard to write a new song for Christmas
it's all been said before
egg nog and fruitcake
all that food and drink galore

All this fuss we have for the holiday
Isn't it better that we celebrate his birthday

-- The Sound of Walls 12.5.09

Aliens Decking the Balls

Dear Mulder...

I had the most bizarre dream, while lying next to the Cigarette Smoking Man, under our trompe l'oeil ceiling.

I was alone in the living room at Christmas, enjoying the generic staples of tradition -- a silver salver of Christmas tree hors d'oeuvres and a half-full flagon of spiked egg nog in the middle of a warm chestnut table. Suddenly I was hypnotized by the tree in all its vitriolic glory. It was bitter for having been made up to look ridiculous, in its garter belt tinsel and dangling balls. I noticed that the balls had an incipient appeal, not necessarily because they were rotating but something more sinister and uncanny. They were hanging serendipitously, but w/ a malicious avant garde shimmer. With hesitation I went to investigate, but not before stopping by the fire for the acicular fire poker. At closer inspection, I noticed there were sylphlike aliens in the jukebox globes, wearing Motorola headsets and sitting on chintz lounges. And they were holding, what I thought to be, hairdryers. But I stared in disbelief, through perplexed perlustration -- why would they need hairdryers? I looked again and discovered that they weren't really festooned w/ hairdryers at all but rather video cameras. They were filming me, as a potential abduction candidate. I became panicked and harangued flowing expletives to the empty room, while running for the phone.

I frantically dialed and said, "Mulder, it's me" while Pink Floyd sang, "is there anybody out there" on the turntable. But it was an answering machine that alluded to that fact that you were sent away and that I could leave my precis w/ your replacement. I didn't want to traduce your character unfairly; I had to chalk it up to a melody of bad timing. While on hold, and although I felt stymied, I ran to the back door, only to see the Mother Ship descending thru its brilliant eldritch spotlight. In short order I hung up nonplussed, hit #2 on the speed dial, and unloaded my diatribe to the Lone Gunman. But while listening to their sixth conspiracy theory, I passed out in a pile of wrapping paper and bows. A missing nine minutes went by and I awoke circumspect; I checked for signs of experimentation, for any out-of-the-ordinary superimposed defects to my person and checked my eyes for black oil. Nothing out of the terribly strange, but it's probably something that will catch my notice in nine months (i.e. like those pregnant women who don't realize their pregnant until it pops out). But I don't think they wanted me for R&D -- too bland and with this blonde cruel streak in my hair, they must've reconsidered their intent of dalliance.

I appreciate your patience, for listening to my capricious story, because I know you really Trust No One.
Sadie

Haiku Hullabaloo

One woven haiku
Seventeen metric inches
A poetic game.

Pink is the flower

A whim a thought a token

Bubblegum friendship.

Salivating dog
A wagging tail excitement
A bone appetit.

In the wee morn hours

Sleep hides in my dreams alight

Toss and turn rhythm.

God with a capital G

God with a capital G

As time was nine and I was forever
I knew one thing and everything
that I liked playing alone in closets
that I wasn't afraid of the thespian plot
that I couldn't be stopped in mid-sentence
that I found misnomers charming
that tragedy hung on the edges of curtains

But add nine and I knew nothing
accept that people are strange
except how to balance my checkbook
except that we infringe upon reason
except that my life spins on an axis
except that light is full of shadow
except that butterflies are fragile

-- except that we emulate everything but God

Snake Eyes

My dad had the most bizarre dream. He was having a foot-slog w/ his uncle thru the meadows and dells when they came upon a man catching snakes in a serpentine river. His uncle said he was going to help because it was a gratifying day. Dad stopped quick as if the indistinguishable snakes became his spine, and said solicitously, "you can't get in that water w/ all them snakes." His uncle proceeded, undeterred and unafraid, down the bank into the murky water like a warrior snake junkie. Although dad had a snake phobia, and his mantra had always been, "I hate snakes," he had a strange urge to cross to the other side of the sinewy river; one being a fugitive from oneself. So his uncle suggested that he would piggyback him across, albeit thru a calm temperament. He was holding a snake and dad said, "you have to drop that damn snake first." His venerable uncle replied, "it's dead, it won't hurt you." Cautiously, dad hopped up on his back and to his utter shock, the snake wickedly lunged and bit him on his big toe. In paroxysms of rage, he was screaming, "get it off, get it off."

During removal, indeed "a most dangerous game", it swung around and got him on the hand too, like a calculated deja vu of sibilated hiss. Venom arched thru his aggrieved veins like hot embers of lava; it was the bite of forbidden fruit. They, in a clumsy and nervous manner, rushed him to the hospital, where his leg started changing colors like a crystal prism. The staff were lackadaisical in responding so he moaned w/ cognoscente appeal, "can we put a little hurry on it so that my heart doesn't stop?" With outright hesitation, they finally started to examine him and said, "we'll have to put you under for the procedure." With tremulous fear, he demanded to know why. They said, "because we'll have to peel the skin back and pour vinegar in you leg."

Luckily he awoke before the remedy, before the untangling of Medusa's hair. However, upon waking, his arm was hurting and he searched for fang marks. He asked me why we have crazy dreams. I said, "I think they're intended to relieve stress." Or maybe it's latent manifestations of our mental abyss, w/ depths that we aren't supposed to access nor figure out. Problem is that when we remember our dreams, it's like a crazy-meter alarm clock that we wake to. And for now, he only wants to dream of a nice fitting pair of snakeskin boots.

A Pint in a Dark Room

I quenched my thirst for two months at the London College of Printing, intact w/ an enlarged head and magnifying-glass-eye. And after class, my accomplices and I, in our black taxis and under the white Waterloo moon, would hang our modest works on the backs of barstools at the nearest pub, which the name escapes me now, but was probably something like "The Shakespeare's Head" or something more modest like "The Slug and the Lettuce." I would love to have a dark room, complete w/ a little red bulb, a timer and fragrances of developing chemicals, but I have to buy the Austin Healey first.

The Bat Night Moon Circles on All Hallows' Eve

sleepwalking thru a corn maze
where skeletons and scarecrows
play rugby w/ carved pumpkins
and apparitions keep score
while witches watch witchy
and their black cats find sleep
under tree-limbed gargoyles

Roman Number Time

On a Roman junket, I rented a red & black Italian scooter w/ a tag that read "Dante9" -- and on a Dramamine high, I weaved in and out of traffic along w/ all the other whining purrs of small stroke engines just so I could be first at the light. What a green-light anticipation I felt coursing thru my sight-seeing elation. I passed Harry's Bar on Via Veneto where Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita in stylistic grandeur, sped thru the Piazza di Spagna where fashion converges in a trinity of parallel streets, where Bvlgari and the queen of cashmere dwell, circled the ancient Coliseum where they crucified martyrs for spectator jolly, and steadied myself in the Vatican mileau in case the Pope stood on Bernini's balcony w/ proclamations of peace and speeches of divine order; speeches typed by an assistente who goes home to sing Puccini while his brethren prepare spaghetti Bolognese w/ Grissini Croccanti al Sesamo. At the return of my two-wheeled chariot, I saluted the Swiss Guard, and I felt bigger in Spirit than ever before. And always I will be inebriated of holy wine.

Birthday Boy is Four Blues in E

They say it's my birthday

I was born a big dog
I was born eating a lot
I like to chase soccer balls
and rabbits that can't be caught

I am too big for my collar
I am spoiled beyond belief
I like to show my smarts
to my masters' full relief

I like long walks
and to be in the lead
smelling and marking
on the grassy seed

I like to do tricks
and turn down the covers
I like to lie on my back
so there's no room for others

I like to be loved
I go crazy w/ my tail
It gets me attention
for I am the Alpha male

They say it's my birthday!

Doors of Saint Irene

Beyond this limewashed door, a Greek couple sit at a bronze table, etched w/ palindromes, pinching leftovers from the night before. They wait for the T-shirts and tourists to leave via hairpin turns so that they can go fishing on the wavy Aegean sea, governed by the touch of gods.

Beyond this door, empty calm except for the gilded sunlight that dances the hokey pokeynas over wooden beams and thru an empty bottle of Vinsanto. The tourists have fled down Penrose stairs, having spent their last drachmas on deified pottery; it's safe to come home, a home molded by a volcanic temper, the wrath of a devil.

Blae Heiven

Once standing under this Celtic cross with a friend
Now kneeling on this plateau of dirt for a friend

Anniversary in Aquamarine & Peridot

For Mine.
Didn't the Bard put it this way, with love bleeding from his quill, "Love is merely a madness"... I agree; but in a dark house, he is my life's blood, my life's joy, my life's enrichment. And on a canvas lit with the moon on water, he is the reflection on my face. And thru love's eternal capture, I can only letter these scarce words on the edge of my voice... "To A -- Happy Sixteenth Work in Progress!"
Yours.

As yesterday was ours, today is ours -- a gathering spot on the horizon, ever always a new opening to each other.

Impromptu:
My life's draw
My life's answer
My life's indulgence
My life's duet
My life's refrain
My life's affection
My life's renewal
My life's atonement
My life's resonance
My life's alms
My life between the lines

miss thistle

Labrador Deceiver

Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to read is true. Only the names have been omitted to protect the innocent.

Sunday September 20th 4.00 AM. Large eighty-five pound dog wakes Master. Dog wants food. Dog is ignored. Dog tries his luck w/ Master number two. 7.00 AM. Master number one lets dog outside. Once back inside, dog indicates hunger. Master number one goes to feed dog. Master number two says, "No, I've fed the dog." Master number one dumps the food back in bucket. Calls the dog a Labrador Deceiver. Dog perplexed. Motions toward his bowl, with his big block head. Evidently, dog feels that Master number one has committed a terrible faux-paw.

On this date, the trial was held in the kitchen. The results of that hearing in a moment. A moment passed. Under the intense light of the bay windows, dog was unremorseful. Dog was convicted of perjury (pawjury?), but was given a suspended sentence.

Blogging the Drain

Meet Jude! He's much older than before, now equipped w/ flappy jowls and sassy attitude. Probably because he ate half a banana (peel & all) today; he devoured it w/ such alacrity that tails and paws were a flying blur. And we can only hope that he isn't blogged up.