March 25, 2014

  • Spring Break

    (Spring Repost)

    shadow05-3030-068Spring break. Every few years I take a break like this. My yearnings begin by noticing that the Sun is rising closer and closer to the east each morning. Or I realize that it is setting more squarely to the west. We humans tend to do things in straight lines and squarely you know. Our city streets and blocks are sectioned neatly east to west and north to south. Everything gets lined up neatly in a row. Our homes, our parking lots, our crops, flags, soldiers and grave stones. We like this, I think we need this order. Scatter a dozen marbles or pop cans and it won’t be long before someone will come along and line them up in a neat little row. Everything in order, everything neatly aligned, we must have it, this symmetry.

    Is there any wonder why we should take notice when the Earth, our Mother Earth , aligns correctly with the Sun? Of course. Equal darkness and light, the Sun perfectly east and west, shining squarely down our streets and casting perfectly aligned shadows from our buildings, trees, and Washington Monuments, everything is in order.

    This year I will look at the flocks of geese passing over head and notice their perfect V’s made from the chaos of their many gatherings. I’ll notice the first emerging dandelions and wildflowers and wonder of their perfectly aligned and symmetrical petals and realize they grow randomly through the greening grass but in their randomness they look like they belong. I’ll look for order from this chaos this year.

    Order from chaos, everything from our planets, our geese, our flowers and down to our smallest molecules need to be aligned. We’ll think of this the next time we obediently and neatly fall in line to get our movie tickets or checking out at the grocery store. When we come together, we form lines. First day of Spring, our ultimate alignment event of them all. We should notice it.

    Today is the change of seasons. Spring! I’m taking a couple days off just to celebrate it this year. It has been an unusual winter, this 2014. I need to take a breath and settle a bit. I am going to be as a child and just notice what’s going on around us. I need to notice the returning flocks of birds, the emerging flowers and unwinding buds. I will fill my two days with music, art and observance of the beauty of things and the wonder. I need this. I will notice.

     

    DSS.

March 16, 2014

  • Midnight Swim

     

    Midnight Swim

    Ever have a fly land in your bowl of cereal?
    The damn thing floats
    Paddles his little feet around
    scrubbing his back
    flippin’ his wings, actin’ a fool
    having a hell of a good time
    No idea that he may sink
    He doesn’t care that he’s drowning
    he is in the land of milk and honey nuts
    The little bastard would be cute if he wasn’t ruining my mid-night knack
    Here! get yourself out of there!
    Hop on this spoon.
    You little widget!

    DSS

     

    I Saw a Girl

    I saw a girl
    She sat relaxed in her chair
    with a cup in her hand
    reading
    Tanned arms and ankles
    blue jeans
    ripped knee, tanned knee
    short shirt, low waist,
    bare goose-bumped skin
    peach fuss skin
    surely the texture of moonlight
    blue eyes
    ice blue eyes
    A glance
    just a look-away smile
    I saw a girl

    DSS

     

March 10, 2014

  • Ren Man

    Never the list of favored people
    never chosen festival king
    invisible to the magnanimous people
    Never given the cities’ keys
    Thought to be the least outgoing
    not one to shake a stranger’s hand
    all consumed in life’s own toils
    The unknown renaissance man

    Man of books of untapped knowledge
    Grand ideas never sought or asked
    Verses dreamed, rhymed and written
    words never spoken or quietly read
    He paints his image in oil on canvas
    Molds his face in sculptor’s clay
    Hopes some day to be remembered
    And his ashes cast some day.

    DSS.

February 22, 2014

  • Polished Blades

    On this month of Valentines and Presidents
    Waxed snow skis and sleds and polished blades,
    Men and women with clear rose cheeks
    take gasps of sharp cold air and fogging breaths.
    Racing on frozen lanes cut by flexing smooth legs
    and taut chiseled thighs.
    Beneath the soft stretched fabrics
    are the hard bodies of youth’s firm human frame,
    Judged by fast changing clocks
    and watchers and lovers of perfect style and form.
    They win or lose by hundredths of seconds
    or fractions of subjective points.
    On podiums they bow their heads with broad white smiles and joyful tears
    To begin wearing metals as heavy as the egos of their national anthems.
    And to be known forever as having the heart of an Olympian.

    DSS

January 27, 2014

  • Abandoned Grieves

    Face the new morning sun and nod a farewell to the waning moon
    Push aside the thin wire gates and smoldering coals
    Tighten and double knot your leather laces and trudge through the thick ankle mud
    Raise your knees high and step steadily through the tall grasses
    that wipe the boots cleaner with each heavy stride
    Wade ahead in the loose knee deep footing to the end of this day
    build a warm fire, dry your boots and worn green socks
    and mind your sore wrinkled feet
    Dream of new beginnings and abandon the year long grieves

    DSS

     

     

December 24, 2013

  • Winter Rain

    As the street lights hum to life
    roads reflect with orange flavored sheen
    car lights bright of red and white
    leave trails behind the wiper blades
    Mercury vapor parking lots,
    piled high with snows remains,
    white hot stains of rocker salt
    are washed away by the winter rain

    many nights of snow and skidding ice
    with no hope of warmer days
    we bundled up in down feather coats
    and followed the orange plowers sand and blade.
    we slowly walked in our winter boots
    our minds wandered to nicer days
    when winds would change from north to south
    and blow in the warm winter rain.

    DSS

December 21, 2013

  • Engrained Season

    Today, Dec. 21, winter solstice, first day of winter, the least amount of daylight, is called the shortest day of the year. Winter, the season that gets better from the very moment that it begins. Yes, although the temperatures may be more extreme, we will have more sunshine by a minute or two each day from now until summer begins on June 21 next year. We can start to enjoy winter because the days will now only get better. No wonder this day caught the eye of even the most ancient men. Every afternoon sitting in their cave watching the sun set farther and farther south causing less and less time during the day and more and more time in the darkness of night. More time spent guarding against the predators of the night and less time during the day spent hunting for food and shelter. They seriously wondered if the sun would return.

    When did they realize that the sun could be depended on to finally ebb at its furthest reach and slowly begin travel of the reverse bringing with it needed daylight and warmth. I’m sure they celebrated this day as they watched the sun set and rise on the two landmarks they may have physically or mentally erected on the horizon. As should we. They could measure their stored food reserve and know that they would either have enough to last the remaining half of their most sparse days or not enough. They would know that their lean days and confinement would indeed end. Although the remaining days of the season may be hard, they would at least be measurable.

    When I notice the sun shining through our south windows and reflecting from the glass doors on our old book-case, without looking at the calendar I know that we are approaching this season. Not as elaborate as Stonehenge but just as effective. And deep down in the core of me, I still feel a sense of relief that the growing darkness is contained and the sunshine will remain just a little longer each day. Although, my food supply is as close as our neighborhood grocery store and the fuel for my fire is delivered to me effortlessly, I have this innate feeling of relief on this day each year. A core feeling that is as surely as much the evidence of the remains of our ancient ancestors as the huge heavy stone pillars of Wiltshire or the small stone circles and charcoal of their ancient fires. The core feelings from the remains of their DNA memory. Their feelings of survival, relief and wonder are in me even though my life is now much easier.

    The changing of the seasons are powerful events for man, events that their survival depended on. They mark celebrations, the beginning of tasks and the beginnings and endings of hot and cold climate and the abundance of food. Man is finely tuned to them. We are finely tuned to them because of the feelings and behaviors that were engraved into our DNA from early ancient man as they observed, learned and adapted to those predictable seasonal times.

    I wonder what feelings and behaviors we are engraving into the DNA memory of future man from the powerful events of our days. We are not just leaving the ruins of our buildings, pottery, weapons and bones. We are leaving behind either the good knowledge or the ruins of our minds in our inherited DNA. Which of these, the knowledge or the ruins, from today’s events of our civilization will be engrained and become innate behavior or feelings of our future man? What ingrained seasons will we pass on for them to celebrate?

    Such is the life of John

December 15, 2013

  • Summer in December

    What’s that feeling you get
    hearing that voice or song or music
    remembering
    who you were with, the thing you were doing
    the time, the song,
    the black and white picture in your mind
    the favorite shirt, the wild hair.
    What is that feeling
    The down deep feeling
    sort of good but empty, sort of sad,
    how many years and how many are gone
    Getting what we need,
    But so many left behind
    Listening under the near full moon
    The words, the notes,
    with that dusty woman.
    The hair scent and the feel of goose bumped skin.
    Feeling summer in December

    DSS

November 17, 2013

  • The Success of Gerald Watswigger

    Gerald Watswigger looked down the steep stairs, stepped down onto the high seawater and sun bleached wooden planks. He attached the end of the short rope to the old mooring cleat and silently stepped off of the pier. With only a few twitches of his legs and feet, Gerald swung silently by his neck just a few inches above the morning tide.

    It was 1982 when Gerald first started to write incessantly. Letters to loved ones, poems he shared with his family and friends, short stories filled his lead pencil stained yellow dog tablets. It seemed words and phrases poured from is head. He began writing for a small local paper and his lust to write was mostly satisfied by his twice weekly column. Being published regionally, the feedback he received was very rewarding. He felt he could add “Gerald Watswigger, Freelance Writer” to his business card and he was not exaggerating. After a few successful magazine submissions, one to Rolling Stone, his first novel emerged. It was nationally accepted and reached five on the New York Times best seller list. He had reached what he thought was the pinnacle of writing success. Then his second was published and then his third. Both equally received and he now felt his career was firmly set both financially and creatively. He was living the dream.

    But this day began as usual, with a quick shower and masturbate, an electric shave, deodorant, tooth paste and hair cream. He pulled on his shorts and struggled into his t-shirt. Still barefoot, Wiggs shuffled into the kitchen, grabbed a cup and using both hands, carefully poured his first cup of black coffee. Gerald, leaning on the kitchen counter with a tremendous headache, wondered if he would ever again be able to write just one more. Just one more story, just one more short flash fiction, or just one more paragraph. He felt the cold writer’s block setting in on his mind and he was feeling the freeze as surely as a cold block of ice. The more he tried to create an original thought the further the dark freezing vail dropped down encasing his brain.

    It was just two days before that he had met her, a young vibrant beautiful Brazilian woman. Long dark hair, deep tan skin and slimmest of bikini lined sun tanned hips, he was so stricken by her low voiced accent. And now a couple days after their passion filled affair he realized he had met her years before in 1982.

    What goes on in a man’s mind, what deal will he bargain when he is confronted with a choice between keeping his creativity, talent and livelihood or to trade it all for just 20 years of success and only a few nights in the arms of a beautiful woman? What disguise will the devil wear and how does he know what a man will trade for his deepest worldly desires? That fog laden morning on that high ocean pier, many years after making that deal, Gerald Watswigger found out the cost.

    DSS

    ( Some of you may recognize this man from other flash fictions I have written about him. I try to create a different but similar demise for him in each tale.)

     

November 14, 2013

  • Our Alternate

    Awakened from deep but restless sleep
    found wrapped in twisted, sweat soaked sheets
    With blinking eyes we sweep away cluttered thoughts
    Trying to reckon the night’s pale fading dreams
    We tell ourselves they are only dreams,
    unreal and needing no remembrance
    Another life within that we are not allowed to know
    a life within our soul as real as the life we can touch during waking hours
    Another life always just beyond our arm’s reach
    faintly there and sensed only in our mind’s eye.
    A place of steep roofs, high bridges and wide canyons
    with clear views of the vast spread horizon
    but all with weak grasps and unsure footing
    Startled awake by effortless wingless soaring flight with sudden falls
    Radiant sunshine, cloudless sky but unknown purpose
    An alternate life that is kept from us
    A life only in our lingering but forgotten dreams.

    DSS