“. . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

             ~Supreme Court Justice Stevens, January 2010

 

DSS.

I am too damn lazy today. I am going to do only things that I have done before. I will rewash the cars, recut the grass, ask that my favorite argyle socks be included in the weekly laundry rewashing. I may, if I really feel lazy, reclean the garage and recycle a few items at the local landfill. The way I understand it, when that landfill turns into landfull, they plan on reusing the area for other things. I would like to think that I contributed to that.

So, being lazy, I am just going to repost a couple poems I wrote about a year ago that I would like to reread.

Saturday June 4, 2011

Beware the robin’s look
The chirp and stare of protecting life
Perched not far away
Demanding attention onto a dying branch.
How far can be flown to gather,
leaving blue eggs to cool
and to tempt the curious.
Does she know what has been nested
or is she as curious as we,
wondering what life has wrought.

DSS

Wednesday May 18, 2011

We have wandered among the green fields,
on the open prairie and in the foot hills.
On the roads, we’ve worked with the tired and the weary.
For days we’ve worked for Saturday’s pay
and for the quenching of our thirst.
Under the summer sun with orange flags and hot oil
our purpose is directed.
Each wet steaming mile under foot is our goal.
To slowly provide a smooth ride
for the cool and the fast. 
Look into  the eyes of the sunburned.
Stare into the dark glasses of the sun blinded
as you wait and then slowly pass.
Long are our days
Long are our roads
Follow our tracks as we spend our day.

DSS

May 5, 2011

Watching the rain, I recede from the day
And I have paused
Outdoor plans will wait
Other things will be done today
Simple tasks that have waited for this morning
Human things thought unimportant while skies are clear
A day that words may be read and written
A time for pacing and patience
Listening for the wind
And watching round ripples on shallow pools.

DSS

I am thinking of the bird’s nest built on the spring season wreath hanging on my front porch at home. The eggs will surely be hatched by the time I return. Perhaps the young birds, mouth wide open, will still be begging a meal from mother robin and stealing a bug or two from their nest mates. Or if I am long coming  home, maybe they will have flown the nest, placing their trust in the thin air as I am today traveling far from my home.

It is always sunny here on top, above the clouds. As the wisps of mist clear to thin clean air, we break into a hidden world above the cloudy day. Towering columns reach high but try as they may they still are below us. Our earth thousands of feet down is now only white vapor and rain and covered by sunshine.
 
One hundred and five minutes, that’s how long it will take to travel what would take my four wheeled conveyance eleven and a half hours. I’m traveling seven times faster but there is no breeze to my face or rumble at my feet. And as far as I know, no one on my bumper, to the left or right of my lane or rambling too slow ahead of us. How can others sleep while I am wide eyed. I have traveled 8700 miles by air this year so far. I have never kept track of the miles in earlier years. Tell me, how many miles does it take until a guy is able to read a newspaper, play a computer game or sleep while being 35000 feet in the air and traveling 450 miles an hour? How many miles until you are deadened to the marvel of it all? Keep the orange juice, forget the peanuts, don’t bother me, I’m looking out the window and wishing I was up front.

Nothing better than being on the way home. Check your bags, who cares if you’ll never see them again. No reason to drag your dirty laundry in the tightly packed, neatly tagged and tiny wheeled canvas Samsonite. Sure, keep the computer and camera but pack the little black bag so you are traveling lightly. You need at least one hand to drink the Tim Hortons or Starbucks. Worry about balancing the coffee and watching the scenery, not balancing two bags and keeping sight of your replacable possessions. Don’t waste your time and energy protecting your “stuff”. You are miles from home and seeing things that you may never have the chance to see again, even if it is just a pretty girl or a set of 4 year old twins carrying a complete boxed set of Matchbox cars that Dad gave them on his way to war.

DSS

I was told by a friend once about the Sleepyman
The long legged Sleepyman, 2 AM slumber preacher
Wide awake counter of the thousands of fence jumping sheep
Planter of sequential thought patterns and soother of unpleasant dreams
He works nights, the 11 to 7 shift
When we feel the urge to toss and turn he’s there to prod us
He’s where the blankets and sheets go when we feel too hot
He’s the guy that messes up our hair and imprints wrinkles in our face
The Sleepyman, Shhhh! I think I see his shadow.

DSS

Dim lighted clouds follow the drizzle rain,
streets are cleaned with brown muddy wash.
But purple spring buds remain tightly wrapped
and the still trees wait for saps nourished life.

This day’s chill air suggests felted coats
and gloves to warm stiffening hands. 
For Winter’s grip holds us strong,
refusing the way of Spring’s gentle touch. 

But keep a hold on the disappearing dreams
of Summer’s warm yesterdays.
The long hours will come of blazing sun
and the labor of baked yellow clays.

DSS

As we walk through the iron gate,
hinged on the brick fence of glazed tile,
I find the glow of sun in your cheek
and the soul of garden nymph in your eyes.

New cotton lace shades your tan arms
 and covers your shoulders as a rose trellis shawl,
You skip in the grasses’ dew with bare sculptured feet
held in silver latchet sandals. 

We say nothing, hold finger to lips, without sound pass the sleeping hound.
Not a word is spoken as we fade into the latticed alcove.
Alone, embraced and chilled by the cool breeze and blown ocean mist 
We whisper of each other’s dreams. 

DSS

The Slow Dance

Please play the slow dance
Let me smell her Taboo
feel her soft hand and sweet Breath on my shoulder
Touch
Let me touch her waist and follow the outline of her form
And bring her closer to me
Let the weakness in our knees cause us to brush our thighs
The swirl in our heads turns our bodies in step
We will slowly move.
Please play the long slow dance

DSS

To my children,

“your parents experienced the fear of possible world war with nuclear warheads during the Cuban missile crisis, their favorite president was assassinated, then his brother too, as well as Martin Luther King. They saw their friends and their brothers killed in Vietnam daily on the nightly news. They saw college students killed by their own National Guard, and civil rights protesters attacked with fire hoses and worse. The 60′s, art and music were people’s way of lifting their spirits in those types of times. “

We hid under school desks
slept to burning visions
Watched as dogs attacked
and hoses washed away the denied
But for every bad there was a good
a song, a film, a painted picture
For every bad man there was a good
a speech, a quote, an epitaph
Old men were called the greatest generation
We lived helpless through their rule
They called us Boomers
We wrote hopeful songs
and made the realistic movies
They call us Boomers,
Now, although old, is our time.

D.S.S.

I have blogged about the Kansas wind on a few occasions and I think yesterday warrants another plug from this windy godforsaken place. A picture will help spare me the words.

I was cleaning my eave troughs yesterday. As I also have said before, my front yard globe willow tree necessitates this very often. The tree sheds everything, leaves, buds, live twigs and dead branches. They all eventually end up in my eave troughs it seems. This is a constant that I have grown to become accustomed to due to the constant winds we have here.

The natives honestly don’t notice it. They’ve lived with it all their lives and they think it’s normal, the constant, unrelenting blow. I know better, I’ve lived elsewhere. Places where you can have a conversation while outdoors without speaking directly into another’s ear. Places where you can go outdoors on the patio and actually read a newspaper without folding it into a small multilayered square. Where you can play frisbee with the kids. There are places in the world where the wind is calm, at least a few hours each day. Calm is the exception here, not the rule.

Now back to the picture. That black dot on the roof is my Budweiser cap. I have had it for years. I don’t drink Budweiser and normally I don’t keep my hat on the roof. I wear it on my head at least part of the time when I work in the yard. Here you really need a hat. Otherwise your hair hurts at the end of the days you must work outdoors. Yes, your roots hurt after your hair has been blown constantly in the wind all day. A hat is a necessity here if you work outdoors. I hate hats as much as I hate the wind. But I have to wear one. I’m growing older, my hair is thinning and I can’t afford to senselessly lose it to the sun and wind.

Because I don’t wear a hat always, I don’t have hat finesse. The natives wear them always, outdoors, indoors, at the dinner table, they may even sleep in them. I have known men for many years here in Kansas and I’ve never seen them with their hat off. They may screw the damn things on, I don’t know. I think maybe that they have worn their hat so much, ever since childhood, that they have a permanent groove around their head that the cap or hat sits comfortably into, secured, unmoveable. This is possible, there are native tribes in Africa that form their heads into all sorts of shapes. I think Kansans unknowingly have done this too. Their hats don’t blow off their heads. I’ve never seen it!  

Being a native Iowan for my formative years, I didn’t have this advantage of head shape forming. I was cursed to simply grow my skull sort of rounded like, with no grooves. Not conducive to cap or hat wearing. My hat blows off regardless of how I screw it on. The only hat I can wear without it blowing off is a stocking cap, and then only if I pull the attached ski mask over my face. They are very uncomfortable for me to wear.

Well to finish my point here, my hat blew off yesterday and ended up on my roof. It evidently landed on the roof in the only place in Kansas where the wind doesn’t blow. It has been up there for almost 24 hours now. I could get out my longer ladder and retrieve it but now I’m curious. How long can it possibly stay up there? The wind is blowing 29 mph already this morning. Surely it will blow down soon. 

Such is the life of John.

E.

Looking down into our depths
where sadness overcomes us.
looking deeply into what we hope is our soul,
the helplessness we feel reigns.
and we cry not for ourselves
but for the one that is hurting,
the one who knows what is so very soon in store for her.

We cry because she knows that the time has come
her struggle is over, and life will end.
we now cry not for our eventual loss
not for her coming end
but for her knowing that death is so near.
her knowing that whatever is her end, it is better than the pain she now feels.
we cry because we have learned this too.

We capture the sadness and try to dry the warm tears
that flow over us and it calms our anger.
Anger that the one we love will be leaving
and she will finally know what all of our fates will eventually be.
We capture the sadness, embrace the thought
that we cry not for the ignorance of the mystery of life
but for both her and our frightening knowledge that a life we love will soon end.

DSS