Saturday, August 20, 2016

Feeding Instructions

1. Find the key under the pot on the wicker table and enter through French doors in the atrium in the back of the house. …
2. Greet Bessie with a treat. Your choice. You'll learn. Put a couple in your pocket ... or if you don't want your change to smell like bacon ...
7. Although we walk her without the leash, Bessie demands attention and “range awareness.” If she senses she is out of your domain, she runs around trying to find a new pile of deer pellets, a fresh road kill, or will sometimes chase the phantom beast into the woods. You know the phantom beast is around when she perks up, poses, and jerks her head from one pose to another. (She is beautiful when the phantom beast shows up, but she also uses it as an excuse to go her own way, indefinitely, and you are being paid by the trip rather than by the hour.) …
16. … Let Bessie escort you to the rabbit hutch.
17. At this point, depending on her appetite, Bessie will try to gulp down some rabbit goodies under the rabbit cage. She wouldn’t be a dog otherwise. (Just a word of warning in case she tries to lick you later.) Make sure she uses her napkin. …
18. Change the rabbit water bottle and refill the food dish in the hutch. Access is through the small roof panel. …
20. Buster is the older of the two rabbits, white and now dominated by the other one, for whom, admittedly, we do not have the same feelings as those for Buster. Say “Hey, Buster,” putting the right intonation on it and letting her know you know she is the victim of circumstance, a prisoner of her pink skin and eyes, her white fur, and the needs of the once weak and pitiful foundling rabbit who has matured to become a dominatrix at poor Buster’s expense. The echoes of that greeting should indicate that Sadya, Vane and Randy will take her out more often, hold her, and let her walk on the fresh grass at every opportunity. And that she is a vivacious looking hunk of rabbit for a 10 year old. “Hey, Buster.”
21. Walk Bessie till she has peed and pooped. We use the time-worn, “Make your BM, Bessie,” because it does seem to have a salutatory effect. She will decide on a spot by a certain, almost telepathic movement, and will circle an extraordinary (seems to me, anyway) number of times. If the number is particularly high or if she changes directions more than once, she does not take offense if you laugh. She is more than a dog.
22. … walk Bessie into the woods. (Because the threat of the phantom beast sometimes looms, and though some, among them I, prefer the gentle light of stars regardless, the light switch for the outdoor lights is above the telephone, next to the French doors in the kitchen. They illuminate the rabbit hutch and the woods trail enough, in most cases, to foil the beast.) …
25. Release Bessie and spend as much time as you like smoking cigars, shooting darts, and otherwise socializing with her. …
27. Ah. Now Barney. Upstairs (through the living room from the kitchen bearing right, u-turn up, at the top, right.) in Sadya’s playroom is the we-call-it terrarium with a chamelion in it. He hides in the lip of the cover sometimes, so be careful when removing it or he will be CRUSHED or ESCAPE! You probably won’t have to remove the lid, though, because he has just been given 24 large crickets who have been left a large leaf of lettuce. Crickets are living in Eden. Barney is on safari there. …
28. Spray the back side of the tank liberally with water [rain forest!] from the sprayer next to the we-call-it aquarium, but try not to hit Barney. He springs alarmingly fast and might hurt his delicate being.
29. … Say your goodbyes. Check the door to the basement once more and leave through the French doors. Rattle them to be sure they are locked.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Talking to myself

When you read her note ...
at the second mention of depression alerted by the first,
leaving in a vacuum, your heart deserted,
somehow fluttered in the emptiness,
and echoed hollow chill inside this place you think.

Your face is cool, your breath is gone.
Along the path your longing (yes, it's longing) exposes some bare truth --
like a single tuft of moss and lichen,
joyous color in a frozen winter wood --
so you see you see. You see you see?
Oh, you are so alone, heartless, breathing here amongst your fellows.

The Shadow of the Object Falling on the Ego


Master, is this why
I am mirrored in your eyes
Or wanting it so?

That seen, do I go,
with diagnosis, surprise,
excuse or goodbyes?

Monday, February 8, 2016

The Bus (working)

Through your kitchen window, you see your neighbor,
the asphalt seal-coater, driving his truck and trailer
up the gray winter street. Why is the roof-vent on the trailer open?
Full of asphalt, fumes and heat, the vent begins to deliver dreams.

The big, yellow bus emerges beneath you as you saw an opening in its roof.

You experience clear, eucalyptus air and laughter as your father helps below
in the California clarity where you and wife have parked the bus of dreams.

The bus wouldn't fit on the neat steep curvy street
where your father lives in the beautiful hillside house
with the deck, the flowers, tiny green front yard, his crumbling marriage
suburbanized across the Golden Gate.

You twice cut openings through the yellow roof and the inside ceiling rainbow,
two metal sheets sandwiching wires in '50s insulation to the back lights.
You cut the wires accidentally only once when you discover they are there.
You repair them, learning school bus electricity from the simple teacher, Accident.

Lying back in the beanbag chair on astroturf in your bussing living room,
stopped en route anywhere -- in the desert, on the shore, among the Tetons --
vent lids, screens and cranks float in ceiling-painted rainbow above.

You look down again while sawing, see your dad's white hair and moustache in front of his smile, then debussed-decades later
turn to awake in today's gray morning, longing all.
2:17 PM 1/16/2010
Source:
Now through your kitchen window, you see your neighbor, the asphalt seal-coater driving his truck with the heavy black trailer, go up the gray winter street. The roof-vent on the trailer is open. You wonder why it's open on this subfreezing day: is the trailer full of questions? of heat?

As he passes, you find yourself through another window, sitting atop the big, yellow bus while you saw an opening to fit one of its roof vents. You sense your father helping below, inside, though you cannot see him; you experience clear, leafy air and laughter in the suburban clarity of the California street where you have parked the bus en route across America to see everyone and -place you know and never did.

The bus you learned to drive on and off the ferry from Alaska, through Seattle, across the Columbia, the Oregon coast, down the Pacific Coast Highway. Here you are in Marin, a lifestyle mecca where there is temporary rest, family and obligation.

You could not park to fit the bus on the steep side over the hill along a curvey, neat street where your father lives in a house carved into the rock with his crumbling marriage, deck, flowers, tiny watered green front yard, so you parked it here.

One morning you twice cut square openings in the yellow, rounded roof. You cut on through the ceiling and a band of color in the rainbow painted in Alaska. You accidentally cut a knot of wires between those two metal sheets sandwiching '50s insulation and Detroit engineering, and thus learn about vehicular electicity from the simple teacher, Accident. You see the roof vents' close-up workings -- screens and cranks and moving air as you sprawl in the beanbag chair on astroturf beneath the rainbow-painted ceiling, stopped somewhere en route to nap. You miss the kitty and your wife sitting in the stuffed chair next to you as you drive.

You look down again through a finished vent opening, see your dad's white hair and moustache in front of his smile, then turn to writing in the gray morning as the neighbor's trailer with its mysterious vent emerges from the sparkling mist of the yellow bus,leaking questions.

And Wacky Am I

And now wacky am I, I thank you, mother, for the days I take no pill; the oak table that folds upon itself, a hinge, a turn, a hidden b...