Christmas in New England

I spent many of my pre-teen years living in the New England States and my Mom was arrested right before Christmas one year while protesting the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant. She was out of the pokey in less than 2 days but it impacted that Christmas severely. We lived next to the state highway in a small town called Marlow in a 3 story Victorian farmhouse built in 1843 and last improved in 1920-something. I think the population is still 200 shy of a thousand total residents. It had an annex and a barn, both attached to the main house so one could walk from the kitchen through the annex into the barn without going outside. It also had a crooked chimney which caused no less than 5 chimney fires in 3 winters, but the only heat came from the woodstoves, so it might not be that surprising. One of my chores as the oldest child was to start the morning fires in the 3 woodstoves downstairs, so most every day when I woke up I would put on all the clothes I owned and walk downstairs to the ground floor of the house and through the annex into the barn to collect firewood.
The winter my Mom was arrested at Seabrook, she and my step-Dad got this brilliant idea to buy half a hog from the Champney’s hog farm down the road. It was a full half hog, cut right down the middle from tip to tail and strung up in the annex on a wire by the snout. When it was first hoisted up and secured on the main joist to start that lazy spin I was fascinated, I pulled on the dead tail and stood on a broken dusty beehive to get a better look at the teeth inside the half of a mouth. I soon began to recognize the different cavities like the empty cranium, and would occasionally stop the slow rotation in order to check out the single eye.

When the days became shorter and I had to walk (then run) through the annex to get the firewood in the cold dark mornings I stopped calling out “Hey Piggy” and just tried to ignore the shadowy dancing carcass. As the winter wore on pieces started to disappear from the hog, and by the time Christmas came it was just the forelimbs, some ribs, the neck and head. I ate that ham for Thanksgiving with zero regrets though. Still, the creepy sprint from the kitchen door to the woodpile in the barn began to cause me anxiety, so much so that I started walking out the front door and around the house to the barn to get the wood.

Step-Dad had to go bail out Mom from the lock up on Dec 20th, and I was old enough to grasp the impact of this, but despite the strange conditions I would take every opportunity to wax long and wide about Santa and his amazing feats of heroism to my siblings. At the bus stop, doing dishes in the kitchen, feeding the cows in the pasture and going on and on about how the fat guy in the red suit could control animals, the weather, even time itself.

So we had a big dinner Christmas eve, with a tree that all of us went to cut down together from the forest near the famous ‘old man on the mountain’, my step-dad swearing at the dull chain saw and my Mom scolding and laughing by turns.
I remember that night how my Mom gave us a big speech about how ‘Santa might be real busy this year’ and maybe would get back to us sometime in January with a great pile of gifts. Of course we didn’t listen much, most of us too excited to even care about the words that drifted out of our Mom’s mouth like grey snow clouds on a windless night.
Christmas morning came and I could see my breath in thick plumes as I lay in bed.
I was excited but also somewhat nervous, right in between the age of reason and the fits of magic. I grabbed some clothes and shoved them under the covers with me to warm them up a bit and started off in the early morning gloom to grab an armful of split cord wood. That morning I was too tired and cold or just plain didn’t care enough to get my boots on so I ran through the kitchen and into the annex. Too late I realized the shocking hog spin was there to greet me, but so was something else…..
A giant burlap sack normally used to take horse feed from the grain store to the barn was lying right in my way. It was all distended and bulky, angular, like it was filled with giant salt crystals. I pretty near passed it up but my foot struck the bag while skirting the hog carcass and I heard the sound of bells, jingle bells.
I grabbed up the bag and it was heavy, and I heard that sound again. Sweet light and crisp like fresh hot toast in my ear I shook the bag and just felt tremendous goosebump joy surge through my body. I streaked into the house from the kitchen and started yelling loud as possible, “There’s a bag from Santa, he left us a bag near swingin piggy!!!” I was practically hysterical. The packages were wrapped so nice and tight with shiny bows and crazy curled ribbons. Everyone came down breathing huge steam clouds like they were all dragons and before my step-dad could even yell at me for not lighting the fire he took a look at the sack and said “glory-osky and god damn pilgrim pie,… what the hell do you have there red?”

Well my Mom was just about bawling as she took the packages out of the sack one by one, like they were made from the finest china, and she gave a look to my step-dad that was half love and half terrible anger. He shook his head and looked wide eyed around the room like he was going to see Old Saint Nick pop up from behind the chair and wink at any moment. I swear I saw waterworks well up in his eyes too, but I can’t be sure as I was too excited.

My memories get a little sketchy about this point, I remember I got one of those giant Shogun Warriors, the kind that stands about 2 feet tall and shot plastic darts from his hands, and I got a Star Wars Han Solo Figure and my first 45 record (KISS – Rock and Roll all night! B/W Beth),..my brother got some cool games and a couple of books which we both read over and over, one of which was The Hobbit.

Well I do remember that my step-dad went and got the wood for the stoves that morning, shaking his head the whole time like it wasn’t hardly attached anymore, and my Mom didn’t stop crying until at least about noon. Me and my brother and sisters got the best toys out of anyone in the whole town practically, and were sort of celebrities for the rest of that winter. So in all honesty, that’s why I still believe in magic, and Santa Claus.

burning, wishing, walking, soaking

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Trees. They become part of the scenery at this time of year don't they?

Yet,... do you see them, feel them,..... do you breathe in their husky myth?

They. Have been here much longer than you. And are most quietly listening.

What you say and do to them is unavoidable, no ducking or running option.
Just passive intense strength - choosing not to decide is still a choice.

think of the senses they touch in you if you have a mind:

smell, sight, touch, taste, being..... just like your teeth. only as strong as you let them
be.

How strong do you let them be?

A massive number that quietly listens - quietly massive, listening number.

foreshadowed in grey

"Dear Roberta Sparrow,
……….....I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to."

I had the dream again. It's been so many years (gawd like 20?) since it came I had forgotten all about it, seared it's visual portent away behind layers of glass and smoke. Burned from so many cells as to escape recall and momentum of presence.

The clouds move away and I am flying and free, so far from everything so much like an arrow, a glider, a spring loaded grifter arcing through the sky.
I must be clearing the horizons terminator as my eyesight seems to dim and grow colder, it seems as if I am slowing while my limbs become heavier and heavier. The stars seem to evaporate in mist and as I turn my head realize that there is incredible weight bearing down, that I can see now the closing ring of light so far above me what must be the surface of the water I am now sinking more deeply than I have ever been. The last pinhole of sunlight reaches to me from far above and as it closes in diameter the world becomes still and dark and I can choose to stay this way or lose my shape and merge with the heavy still blankness. I feel the soft crush of millions of gallons squeeze every drop of oxygen from my body as I pass into oblivion and then wakefulness.

I am never left with that breathless post-nightmare feeling, it's more a slow burn; like I just got over a knock in the head.

course work - standardizing breakouts

Fuckoff. It’s a lyric from pavement.

Glance, don't stare
Soon you're being told to recognize your heirs
No, not me -- i'm an island of such great complexity
Stress surrounds in the muddy peaceful center of this town
Tell me off in the hotel lobby right in front of all the bellboys and the
Over-friendly concierge.

Yeah I lived this, yeah I am just a nother. Ripped on whiskey parked in solitude.
Whatever, like you haven’t. She said she was comin over tonight.
Painting she said, needed some materials she said.
Am I a garbage dump? A fucking pit in the psyche?
Yeah I lived that. Whatever. I live to serve and you live to earn.
Is there really a difference? Do you have such joy without pay?
My sun burns bright in the heavens, that light hurts your eyes?
Interesting, observe, defend, collusion, patronize.
Cycles you want to shine, steam in the deep which way to fly?
Now you have a safety net lane. No need to worry right?
It’s good because I see how turmoil drives your muse.
Not much to leave tight now?
Not much to leave right then?
Not surprising and when you catch me, my shadow will laugh, bilious and provocative. Feel bliss – as long as you can – it’s yours right now.
Earned and stocked in that cellar you call the muse.

Shockingly Irresistible

Time blinks, it holds and rolls me flat under it massive girth squeezing the soul juice into droplets that rivulet away into floor seams and roof beams.
Island dreams come next and delicious comfort driven before it, herded and coaxed along my eternal expectancy driving the chaff as I peek behind every corner and doorway, relieved and disappointed by turns when finding nothing but moist air and dust clumps.

Impetuous shelter in red velvet and garden apartments we used the cheese and chocolate to hold back thundering minutes, relenting to the fine pull of strong wine and sifting through the embrace of eyes, skin, hands. Too soon it ends and time readies itself for another brace of change, our fear of its inevitability has been given symbolism as twice a year we demand all clocks and calendars rearrange themselves, a paltry gesture that resides on walls of sand to control the tide.

Now it’s crushing me against the wall as it passes by with a giant load, the vacuum of its wake with invisible hooks urging me to follow, demanding that I recognize.
Stockings and candles and rapturous smellings provide more than distractions, letting my mind-heart torrent relax, not looking behind doors or breaking silences with a sigh at least for a short time.

some cages need no steel

“It’s nice… very open… this table is really big you could invite Boone and I over for dinner sometime…”

These words drifted off in to the room and the silence swept in like falling poisonous blossoms in a hurricane. The poignancy unintentional, but carefully crafted; rolled like a fine cigar in the hands of a child.
I ran my hand, skin dry and rough from the lotion she took and I needed to replace, along the sealed wood of the cabinet concealing the TV. In silence I set up the cables and cords so that it received signal from the world outside. Images sprang into action diffusing the room with senseless chatter. The wind bent apple tree in the rumpled backyard sighed and wheezed as it gasped along with the minutes and my extended duality. Friend, former lover, spouse, handyman, fixer of meals and broken sheetrock mincing the garlic and the power of longing. My longing. The innate desire cruising through all tangents of my life, pleading with the train of time to bolt forward if even just for a minute. Get past this.

I close and lock the door when I get home. The sink smells of wet spoilage and the clothes link together on the floor in a haphazard macramé begging me to pick them up and give them the dignity of the wash basket. I kick instead, bind rage infused, and they scatter like vultures disturbed from a carcass, some of them landing on the violet pocket shoe rack hanging on the closet door. Not mine.

The final blow

There is no person; there is no institution that can absorb this. The disappointment and sadness of a 10 going-on-11 year old who gets his life yanked out from him. What makes a parent feel regret? I can tell you. But you might want to listen otherwise you are too self absorbed in your own life to even notice. How to explain that its all gonna break? There is no way. I still love you, and everyone you know because I know music. It has whats kept me sane through all this, 4 bands 3 recordings, and I gave my all time best during the process. Hurt and wounded but channeling that and focusing a bitter pill into some massive attack. Please believe in what you do, what you think and feel, the most relevant of tangents. Thanks for holding me and keeping me in your heart I can feel that, it helps with the meetings, and the conferences and the cleaning of the kitchen. The times I am alone in this dark hot house, if you have a deity if you feel like you have spoken to that source and it has answered I am there, because I believe. It brings me closer to the master of the universe, to the giant on the beanstalk. You wanna get it right and you wanna choose. So do I.

you are beautiful

I haven't done a ritual in a while but tonight I wrote myself a page and set fire to the pile in my living room. It was crap but so freeing to my soul and some good friends have really been there for me lately writing and speaking words of calm lunge. Sleep and est have lost grasp on my heart for now, it's mechanical like a pump or a spindle. Here it is and was accompanied by crushing music 'knife in the water' 'thought forms' 'Brian Ferry' 'velvet Underground' and 'spacemen 3'.
made it through thanks to the peeling back and the strength of friends.

Dream when on feet
Courage counts minutes
Really, really washing the dishes
So fucking clean spot destroyed

Bursting proud skin heat
Reaching when cymbals crash
Heads flex wildcat top white hot
Motion sung burnt with front Em-
Plays when drenched thick
Sweat drip until spent up
Moments shine large with peril

Words reach across pond field stream
Bridge lights front me in bath beam
Pardons are given met right on
Essential acids restored in purposeful match

Turbid monstrous meltdown
You can beat them
And all that shame
I wont cant stand shade now
Eating that plate in belief
Separate heroes walk in place
Bitching froth makes me ache

Somehow strong makes its way
To my sacred place
It could be a kitchen or
Church near a Sheffield grave


To play to play meant it
I spy with internet eyes
Renounce my regret to increment
But all went out in the rain
What smolders was hot flame
Carving iron seals meter my way
It’s brought now bought yours forever from this day.

part and parcel

Feeling like my body is having a stoke in reverse

Loss of function, insoluble recognition of mental limb

Loosely at first blush and then crescendo into rigid muscular flex

The surface cannot go calm no matter how long I wail and stare

Crowding every bit of being alive by pushing feet to the concrete

Curses die on my lips cotton mouth sleight of hand

Asbestos and Bed Bugs

I don’t mourn the life lived, only the cycles that inexorably, disgustingly keep themselves crashing at my gates. Tidal and circumspect; like a locked groove in endless unpredictable motion, spin me into oblivion and suck. These days I don’t cut my whiskey with soda for taste, I do it because it goes down just the same way and that’s a damn waste of good whiskey.

The precept happens when one irks the psyche, spilling true understanding down upon the soul like tainted honey from a dead hive of bees. My psyche in this case was suddenly irked when it was discovered that my one-year-old marriage had been sabotaged almost from the beginning and by one of my oldest of friends. This kind of ecliptic blow is not unknown to me, it happened when one of my girlfriends suddenly became bi-polar, when another of my friends offered to kill an ex for me and then ended up in a Missouri penitentiary for life, when my best friend in 2nd grade was run over on his big wheel while I watched, when I knew I had fallen in love with a musician woman half my age half way around the world and I was engaged, when I finally connected to a beautiful woman then left town to be with a crazy one, when my favorite cat hung itself on the stereo cords and I didn’t bother to get out of bed to check, when I proposed to a woman who was smart enough to parse the truth that we simply shared a biological function together, when I realized my most influential participation in a band was breaking up because the friend songwriting genius was a secret heroin addict – when I realized I could have fulfilled my dreams if I had just taken a chance to believe that I could. But this is not a diatribe on regret; it’s not a treatise on lost permeation, or a missive of bitter revealings. This, my friend, is the life lived and utterly enjoyed; because nothing stands so firm like awesome, courageous, ephemeral life. I was so lonely once that I took my pants off at band practice, because I was in a band with 3 gorgeous women and I couldn’t figure out how to get any attention from any woman anywhere. I laugh now, I strut and spout about the moments I should bury deep inside my self-consciousness, moments I should hope to exercise with lasers and scalpels, but instead celebrate because I wear the absurd and disconsolate close to my chest; because when there is nothing but sheer locution and pain my mind wanders to the absurd, disjointed and wonderful moments that will always remain unexplained.

Once I used the promise of endless years left to live to justify the times I ignored my intuition, the moments I felt myself shuffling through predictable scenarios in my life. The first heartbreak decades ago, coming home from tour a day early to an empty house and being batted against the temple with the knowledge that she was at his house. I used to focus inward, wondering what I needed to learn about humans and nature, about myself or the intersexual relations I futured and fostered.

So now when immutable fact suddenly transcends into chaos and all judgment becomes tenuous I put on Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth, hoping to reach some harbour, some balance in mind and soul. My old friend and compatriot, creating some semblance of comfort in a world utterly gone mad beyond duct tape and chewing gum. Shifting randomly like the dust and cat hair on my foyer.

We met through a work mate – a wonderful woman who was married to a musician I admired greatly. It seemed like ecstasy and bliss wrapped in the most delicious pastry. We both had such similar stories - a son each, single parents for years, the struggle and heartbreak of living life into the void and all the while providing and describing the shape of the world for our most precious cargo. Her appetite was insatiable, like kissing the whip, I was unable to sustain the meteoric assent. I held each moment precious and sacred, the ceremony was at SF City Hall, with my one witness and long time friend still left in SF from the desert, her with 3 close friends and both our sons in attendance. This was by design and in full consciousness as neither of us trusted the institution or the examples we had been provided as youth. Delicate and simple, but it came apart all too soon. Soon the confession of infidelity and dissatisfaction; the unknown interloper who crashed into our probate of partnership drilling deep into the cloth of trust and loyalty. It washed like white hot lava into my brain but we had so much love and purpose that we continued, through counseling and explosions, through accusations and depression, both of us equally ministrating the pain and hurt from perceived incompatibility and discontent. It seemed to work, biting at times, harshly furious and overwhelmingly ugly, but those moments seemed to give way to peaks of solution and tight bond. It’s never the same, it’s more than a game, can’t take it away, can’t kill all the shame,……

Working with what ever was there, eating shit or making cakes was really the same.

It started with a work incident, I manage 16 people and we all work together well.

Our workplace was under an earthquake retrofit, something quite common in California, and then asbestos was discovered. We were asked to evacuate. The shit started to go down, differing accounts of safety precautions, crazy inferences, and I raised my voice because I felt I represented some important people – namely the incredibly hard working souls who are my Team. I wrote and sent an account of the incidents that transpired so there was no mistake. But – it flew in the face of liability and status quo; it made fault where there was reported none and the result was my undoing among my superiors at work and peers that facilitated my projects. I stood alone, suddenly – irrevocably. My training rescinded and expenses unpaid I decided to use the fare I bought to travel back to a place I once lived anyway, Chicago. I met with old friends and had an amazing time with strangers. I played music and enjoyed spontaneous commiseration from the most unlikeliest sources, I once again felt inured. Still the heart beats and regrets nothing, using all nuances to sway the soul into mirrored being, opening probabilities and launching hope anew. Ugly horrible hope. A woman I had been close to for nearly a lifetime took me in and made me whole and then supplied the undoing to my current life, volunteering unasked information which made all the mysterious pieces of the marriage infidelity fit together. Making me realize one of my oldest friends – the man who witnessed my marriage for me, who I have known through 3 lifetimes and 2 different locales– decided in a sober and deliberate way to have an affair with my wife, that was the missing link. Complicating matters, I now had no one to commiserate with. All of my dearest friend were also friends with this jackal but did not know the difference, yet. Should I break them? So many questions. Suddenly thrust back into the home life a new twist develops, bug bites, welts and bruises form on my wife even as I confront her with the information about the crushing reality that the man who I entrusted to witness and stand with me during my marriage ceremony, whom I had know for over a decade, willfully decided to succumb to the most pedestrian interplay. Her wrenching admission under confrontation seems to be reflected by the four dozen welts on her body. The best man screws the wife of the best friend. Some kind of access channel soap opera, off-off-Broadway play, a Montel Williams rerun. She leaves but under the guise of multiple insect bites I mysteriously do not receive. Confronted with the truth she belches forth and reveals herself, coloring the ground and immediate geography with stench and deception revealed.

Affronted, this powerful epiphany strikes me to the core and also seems so achingly familiar. The hurt, the promise obliterated, the broken crucible of hope.

Faced with deliberate misconstruction of facts about risk to my peers,

I speak the truth at work and anonymous emails assail my character, the institutions of the heart continue to dissolve; what I scarcely wanted to believe in becomes every fear I imagined, couching itself in the trappings of human frailty and posture. Tonight I clean a house, washing, sweeping and flossing the most mediocre of tangents in an effort to distill emotion into reasonable order. It does not come, it does not reveal itself and remains the elusive prefect of unattainable delusion. I take interest in how to learn of course, blinding myself to perdition and faith so that this night can pass into the next. The whiskey helps for now but I dread when its effects wear thin and ragged, lament the moment when all blur meets mental arsenal forming unmitigated clarity. My character has a voice built on recompense, meaning there is nothing outside of my soul that can actually disable my compassion. Is that really choice – or is it simply survival?

Travel far and wide reader, reach for the rings that might be impossible, you have nothing at all to lose. There may be a time when all substance levels itself on your head, crashing about your ears as if you were a giant and the mind you use is among the thunderheads; trying to make distance and reason collaborate with unfeeling chemical reaction. Tomorrow I will again awaken to the sun, it’s rise signaling the inevitable birth and instigating the next 24 hours of revolt. I scale sheer facades in time, claw at insubstance and peer into the maw. I will not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day, be sure of that from me.

It never sleeps but it never tires,
and it never fades, after all these miles.
And If that's what it costs..... to shoulder it, it should be more than that,
it should be more than that,
how can it not be more more than that?
and if only I could win you away.