night of the long knives

1934 - a total usurpation of power in Germany.
and I've yet to visit the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Il.

This will be amended quite soon as I have always meant to go but not wanted to go.

In the distance there is a truck backing down a driveway and somewhere near here there are baby raccoons looking forward to a life of hiding and eating garbage.

102

The boy is running a fever, the kittens are getting more playful and there is a load of dishes that I understand are my responsibility.
So I sit here smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and contemplate firing a vendor that works with our PTO.

This is draft two of this particular post. I don't blame the dishes or paper airplanes for the apparent lack of style today.
I don't blame the newly hatched robin or those awaiting to be hatched on the downspout adjacent to a window looking out from my typewriter.
a fever has no concern for the goings on of the lives it affects.

Reality is a pain in the ass sometimes.

A few things for today - maybe no poem but we shall see.
I was reading a friend of mines blog where she shared an excellent story of strength through defiance and 24 year old bravado - you can read it yourself here. One of the commenters mentioned getting a CCL permit, which I read to be a CCW permit - a license to carry a concealed weapon. There are a lot of folks against this for various reasons but the aforementioned story highlights a point I often make in the face of the "wouldn't it be a better world without guns?" - my answer? - no.  what? you didn't hear that? - It was a resounding NO.
Say the story ended a little differently and the 24 year old was beaten or worse by the two offenders instead of backing off. What was she or the guy she was with going to do about it if it escalated into an absolute horror show? Not a damn thing could have been done except possibly call the police who would have arrived well after what ever could have happened happened.
I firmly believe that all women should carry a weapon that they have been trained to use in the moment of need. I would feel much better if my mentally stable wife would walk around with her SR9c in her purse (and maybe she does, who knows?). 49 states have acknowledged that this right exists for a reason - self preservation, among others.
I usually give this scenario - imagine a large man who stands nearly 6'2" - weighing well over 200 pounds and no-one (including doctors) would describe him as fat. A large animal and can be terrifying to behold. If he met a woman or girl and decided that he was to be a brute - is there anything that can be done to stop him? not by most unarmed females, however, a smallish revolver or auto is an equalizer - one that would stop even the most vicious attack. It is far better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.
I'll end this here but I am sure it may be carried on in the comments.
If you can - get a CCW, train properly and have it should the need ever arise and I hope that it never will. It isn't that you ought to live in fear, it is that you ought to want to make it to bed every night and wake up every morning unharmed.





for some levity...
look what I found!

Four of the most precious kittens - between my and my neighbors back yard. Jackson has already named one.

mittens.

Almost cut my hair

It wasn't the hair I was worried about - This is obvious to the onlookers as I allowed a seven year old to cut it - it was the beard I had concerns over. It survived the seven year old shearing.

Had I done it I would look a little different on top but he insisted and I like to encourage - so I am closely cut and all the scars on my head from years of flying through windshields, hitting pavement (M/Cycle) and one golf club to the top, are now showing.
I am not loved for the scars but because I managed to grow despite them.

Cold all night due to blanket in wash. White summer blanket used when I was younger now barely covering my shoulders to shoes, pulled taut between and wrestled within for some semblance of insulation. I did not wish to awaken my lover so I didn't get close enough to prod the embers of my outer layer.

Beautiful day, although a bit over done on the inside.

Accomplished a lot yesterday and it feels good - warm and toasty like the hives or something. Body now a bit on the worn side and deciding what I am going to do today along the same lines. All thoughts include power tools but what I really ought to do is sit in front of the power tool that brings me that much closer to the goal - namely, the IBM Selectric III - best power tool I have.

The poem I was intending on putting up here today is becoming a broadside from free penny press and may be available for free through this blog - I don't think it has been decided yet on distribution - So, that poem will not be appearing here today or for a long time as I would prefer it be gathered up in the published form. So I will substitute.

only the poor know

only the poor know of love's intensity/ many know only of mergers (marriage)/thus propagating the common ideal.// for love you merge the bodies (sex)/thus propagating life./love, joy, obsession, fixation, release/ and good sleep.

 - Hoc Scripsi

 

good morning everyone - I'm going to bed now.

I almost never write naked - there are times while in bed and after feeling enraptured beyond illumination or prose by the pressing together of two forms and bonding with sweat and efflorescent nothings whispered passionate in each others ear - those times I will roll and pluck out a small black notebook and pen a few lines before returning - but most of all is written while dressed and thinking back with forward anticipation.

pain and poetry

From here, the days just keep getting shorter. This is what informs my day

What would you do if you knew you could not fail? this is the test to know what you should spend you life doing. it is suppose to be rhetorical and/or asked by every guidance counselor of every pimply faced teenager who doesn't know yet what they want to do. I didn't know then - or I did but it wasn't considered a wise career choice.
My answer now? - no longer live through the vagaries of chronic pain - find a way to free myself from the unrelenting haunt that are, the constraints of living that are, physical pain and mental anguish.

What I once wished was to be a poet - to varying degrees I am that now, I live it and it is possibly pain that has given me this aspect, pain that has offered me clarity through pain controlling medications, pain has offered me poetry that does not belong on even the most interesting hallmark cards.

a little on the self

Last night, after making love, outside smoking and the coyotes were getting close, I had my 1911 but after midnight it is too loud - we went inside. Listened to them get ever closer as we fell to sleep.
Now I am looking for a good varmint rifle - something in a .223 as I refuse to be eaten by an animal.

I don't think of myself as a contradiction but as myself - unique as all people should be and alike as all humans are.
a Poet, Buddhist, gun lover, biker, romantic, cripple - these are not contradictions and I practice non-violence in balance to the gun I carry on my side.

Yesterday I got read a smallish version of the riot act by a very good friend for referring to myself as a cripple. He said he winces a bit every time I say it and that I need to find a better descriptor. Maybe he is right - certainly he is honest, intelligent and an excellent friend. It is that I feel crippled, I feel like a Quasimodo hanging from the bell tower yelling "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" - but I know that I am not a cripple but have been crippled - therein lies a a major difference. In terms of strength and size I am capable of being a monster, frightening to some who don't know me and gentle and kind to those who do. The leg has been shortened and crippled, it has been cut and lives on in pain but when need be I still pick up and hold my seven year old to calm his fears, his tears and his to remind him that no matter how he grows - he is loved deeply and completely. I am not a cripple and as was pointed out by my friend - I would bust the chops of anyone who said so to my face - I have been disabled, but not defeated.

four fingers

sleep sleep - where are you now? on Benedryl max strength, ultram, cymbalta and norco - I should have passed out mid OJ guzzle - maybe to add whiskey.


I love for southern France,
with my wife,
beautiful and windy
like chicago,
but more beautiful,
like my wife.

 - this at one thirty-six am, drunk off medications, OJ but no whiskey. - I'll take four fingers of your finest, please.

Focus on the writing

Things are starting to get easier - I think. I may have a cold or allergies - probably allergies but the sandbox is finished and beautiful. I have to recharge the air filters on my motorcycle and truck and finish the application for disability and SSI - these are both things I've been putting off but can no longer.

7.62x54R

the madman levels his rifle
in calm calculus
bright cloudless day
78 degrees F (23 c).

7.62x54R forced from the barrel
spinning in terminal glory.

the poet stands, taciturn,
in the street with notebook
pencil to paper
calm calculus
accepting and falls to
his knees. Last poem penned
in darkest red.
78 degrees F (23 c)

 - Hoc Scripsi

Here I am, cigarette in hand...

but the coffee is running low and I've a sandbox to finish building.

I prefer sunflowers from my wife

a bouquet or even a single flower

I don't notice the vase

a Van Gogh sitting on my kitchen table
with a note proclaiming love

I prefer sunflowers from my wife

to all other gifts.

coffee

I need to start drinking iced coffee or maybe iced tea. I'm the only one I know that really doesn't care for iced tea and I absolutely cannot stand iced coffee. iced soy chai - now your talking but why go out and spend five bucks just to sit outside and fuck around on the laptop. It is never too hot to enjoy the home brew - it is never too cold to eat a bowl of ice cream, and all movies watch better with popcorn.

Today's poem is a few years old and has been published twice - once in Roadkill zen Journal and again in my book, hands on the hips (available from Amazon or signed if you order through the buttons in the upper right hand corner), I have put it up because RKzJ has closed their site and it is no longer available there - this is the bad thing about internet publication, it creates no history. I think I should take screen shots where my poems appear on this world wide web just to have the history for my self - kept in a box at the bottom of a closet.

togethercoloured

roadside diner,

a dollar for bitter coffee.

I want the hard rain.

I want the long rain,

HARD on my shoulders and face

with hands stuffed in pockets

clutching three dollars.

I want the drowning rain,

pooling underneath

walking feet. Running

shoes cleaned and soaking;

peregrination of two miles

in a Chicago summer,

toward a phone call, paper towels

and over-extracted coffee.

- Hoc Scripsi 

Day of days

Garcia Lorca, born today, today I love you, like everyday but today I weep for this love and its end on a moonless night.
a short vignette of sorts...

Garcia Lorca, my Federico - a poet born to violent end
we sing you, decorate your memory with flowers
we sing you and your thousand gypsy songs
we sing you, we sing you a myriad of songs and stars
caught in the heavens looking down


on a completely different subject depending on ones point of view


AIDS is first reported in 1981 and today is that anniversary (30th) - today I love but not love AIDS - today I weep, profoundly - I think of artists, musicians, dancers, lovers and free men and woman all dying or dead of a disease whose name was never spoken by the elected leader of the time - such ignorance and more research put into the common cold than in research for what was killing and would kill - a fantastically dreaded disease which eats not only at the body but at the mind, soul and spirit.
I was born before AIDS but in large it has defined parts of my life, touched others and, if I can say it, graced the rest.


and Micael, Micael... O, now forever on this day shall I think of you, dance to your being - 

Holy Allen

Happy birthday Holy Allen, Happy birthday Josephine,

may your poems and songs in heaven reach here where your voices are still needed most

the good doctor, dead today, heart stopped and body preparing for rest

today I go out shooting guns and laying waste at ranges to celebrate second amendment

remembering Holy Allen, Josephine and now the good Doctor...


we will all meet in Heaven if that be where I end.

a day in the life

was with the same insurance company for about 14 years on the cars and cycle. Last August when I bought a new bike they quoted me three times what the same policy had cost four years before on a then new bike of the same make and model - I didn't go with them on that - when it came time for house and renter property insurance I went with the same company and although I thought it was high I went with it because what the fuck did I know - well just switched away from them and saved on the cars and houses about 1600 a year - haven't switched the Harley insurance because as of right now I am insuring through Harley and who knows motorcycles better then they?WIth the former company I insured through they would up my premiums every six months and I had to call and negoiate the rates back down and usually prevailed in getting them lower than they were the 6 months previous - yea for me but what a waste of time every six months.
Lesson - want to save money? shop around the insurance and give the big names a try - they will surprise you. I did not go with any company that hadn't been in the business for decades - nor did I go with any that advertised any specific or non-binding % off current coverage.

That is enough about the business side of life...

on the more fun side I have been on a lego building kick for a few weeks and am about to complete the Death Star which I received as a gift two Christmases ago. I love Lego and couldn't think of any better way to wind down the extremely busy weeks that have compromised the last two months - well, Lego and going to the range tomorrow with a good friend, Kevin. We are partners in pain - physical pain, not mental - physical which fucks with us mentally continually.

Not the best poet and certainly not nearly as entertaining as Pearl or Micael - but it will have to do.

a poem perhaps?

only sleep eases pain

only sleep eases pain

pain defines.

joy, happiness, collusion

love even distrust,

having dreams, night terrors, delusions.

all are unknown in entirety.

“how perfectly goddamned delightful it is

to be sure.”

every moments considered

length is by pains

varying degree.

 - Hoc Scripsi