Coming Down the Mountain

It seems I have been staring

at this blank page for days as

I rummage through my mind for

something to write about.

There’s been half started stories,

reflections on power, leadership,

love, jealousy, work, summer,

sex, booze, childhood memories.

Yet all of them, all those words,

have fallen off the smooth surface

of this cruel blank page.

Avalanche like.

A slow start, a snowflake too many,

and the whole mountain side of

prose comes rocketing down the

mountain and smothers the valley below.

St. Bernard’s are down in the word snow now,

looking for survivors, or corpses.

It’s not looking good for those valiant

canine heroes. Or the booze around their necks.

The word snow is just too deep, not in philosophy,

but in their number. A jumble of uninspired,

lazy words, crammed on top of each other in

ununified layers, saying little, with a lot.

I’ve had kissing scenes in my head,

passionate, sweet kisses between lovers,

fall apart as my own bitterness has poisoned

my fictional lovers.

They stare at me, blankly, waiting for me to

get to the good part, when their hearts swell

with absolute joy for each other, but all they get

is silence. Almost a quickie of literary writer’s block.

The child version of myself, sits quietly, waiting for

me to finish the rest of his story on the day he lost

his Superman toy car down the sewer at recess,

both I’m afraid are forever lost.

The hallways of political power are

empty, because I cannot seem to clarify

what it is I’m trying to say about political heroism,

as I seem to have become jaded.

Crashing down into a huge pile of

inconsequence, the words have buried,

the small village where ideas live,

breathe, multiply and die.

My focus seems to be on the trivial,

on my annoyances, my pains, my

inexplicable desires for what I believe is

right, my shame.

This blank page…

This damn blank page…

This god damn blank page…

This son of a whore god damn blank page…

Rummage, rummage, rummage…

Platypus Problems

Dreaming of a platypus,

that’s how best to describe

the confused and disorganized

dreams that have kept me awake

these past few nights.

In dreams, both the hero and

villain, lover and fighter,

enraged and passive,

yet always shocked into

wakefulness by intangibles.

A platypus does not question

the nature of its reality,

it simply is what it is and does

what it does even though to our eyes,

it’s a mish-mash of other animals.

I’m grumpy and annoyed

with the state of things,

things I no longer understand

about the world, a world that

seems changed.

Yet, it’s unchanged. It’s the

same cycle of nonsense as

history repeats and patterns follow

patterns of pre-laid plans of long

dead men.

A desire to be modern, open, free

and unique, tempered by degrees

of imposed limitations, quixotically

mashed together in a stew of

potentiality.

Duck-billed, beaver-tailed,

otter body, egg laying mammal,

with venomous spikes in the heels,

unique in the animal kingdom,

yet just like every other platypus.

The dreams, keeping me awake,

frustrated and riddled with self-doubt,

inferiority, mingled with a curious

confidence and optimism about

where and whom I’m supposed to be.

Dichotomous and complex,

endeavoring for wholeness,

and the peace that comes with

knowing oneself,

like a happy platypus, dreaming of me.   

An Extremely Typical Short Story

                Bradley looked up from his guitar strumming and at the woman standing in front of him. She had her hands on her hips and seemed to be saying something important. She was red in the face and her forehead was deeply furrowed.

                “What did you say baby,” asked Bradley.

                “I asked you what the hell you think you’re doing with these,” shouted Amanda.

                Amanda held up a pair of lacy red panties. She shoved them towards Bradley’s face. He didn’t recognize them right away.

                “I don’t know baby. Aren’t they yours,” he asked.

                “Mine! Mine!? When have I ever worn red panties,” yelled Amanda.  

                “I don’t know. Christmas maybe?”

                Amanda threw the lacy red panties into Bradley’s face and she started to storm away. Bradley removed the panties from his forehead and looked at them. He assumed that the panties were not Amanda’s.

                “Baby, I don’t know whose panties these are. Why do you think that I would know,” he asked.

               

                Amanda froze in her tracks. She turned back around to see Bradley holding the panties in his hand up to his nose, sniffing them slightly.

                “You’re a bastard,” said Amanda.

                “What? Why am I a bastard,” asked Bradley, “What did I do?”

                “You really are going to sit there, like some god damn hippie in your ratty tee shirt, strumming that useless guitar and play all innocent. You know full well what those panties mean. They mean that you cheated on me,” shouted Amanda.

                Amanda hated how hot her face was. When she found the panties balled up under the bed; the bed she and Bradley have shared for the last eight months. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t going to get upset. She was going to stay calm and confront Bradley. She was feeling the tears in her eyes and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of her anger.

                “I didn’t cheat on you. And you bought me this shirt. I love this shirt,” said Bradley as he pulled on this shirt collar. Which ripped a little more.

                “Bullshit. Then why were those panties under our bed,” said Amanda.

                “I don’t know,” shouted Bradley.

                “Did your whore forget them as you rushed her out of our apartment,” said Amanda.

                “I don’t know any whores,” said Bradley.

                Amanda crossed her arms across her chest. Bradley looked at her breasts. Her forearms were pushing her breasts up giving her a surprising amount of cleavage.

                “Are you looking at my breasts,” shouted Amanda, “You jerk!”

                “What, they’re great breasts. I can’t look at them?”

                “Not while we’re arguing you asshole,” yelled Amanda.

                “They look great though,” said a smirking Bradley.

                Amanda uncrossed her arms and put her hands back on her hips. She stepped closer to Bradley. He stood up from his bean bag chair and put his guitar down.

                “You can go to hell Bradley. You can eat shit and die. You think you’re some sort of rock star, but you’re not. You an unemployed jackass who only thinks about himself and only about what is going in your life. You don’t care about anyone else. You’re a bad person and I knew I should have listened to my mother when she said not to fall in love with a musician. And you’re not even that good of one,” said Amanda.

                Bradley shuffled back a step. He thought she was going to kiss him after his really awesome compliment about her breasts.  She didn’t though. Bradley thought about what she said.

                “Not a good musician,” said Bradley.

               

                Amanda bent down and picked the panties up off the floor.

                “Yeah, not a good musician. Here…” said Amanda, “play these!”

                Amanda threw the panties at Bradley again and she pounded her feet into the hardwood apartment floor as she walked away. She grabbed her bag from the closet as she walked by and went into the bedroom. She slammed the door behind her.

                “Not a good musician,” questioned Bradley as he pointed at himself. 

“What did she know,” he thought. She came up to him after that day he played in Potbelly’s Sandwich shop. She told him that she liked the way he played. “Was she just lying,” wondered Bradley. He thought she really liked his music.  He looked at the panties on the ground. They had fallen next to his guitar after the second time Amanda had thrown them at him. Bradley looked at the panties and started writing song lyrics in his head.  

Amanda opened the bedroom door with her bag strapped over her shoulder. Her make-up tackle box in her right hand.  She stood in the hallway for a moment staring at Bradley. He looked back at her and shrugged.

                “Where you going baby,” asked Bradley.

                “I’ll be back for the rest of my stuff when you’re not here,” said Amanda.

She opened the apartment door and slammed it behind her.

                Bradley looked back down at the red lacy panties. He sat back down on the bean bag chair. He looked back at the panties. The red, lacy panties. There was something about them. They seemed familiar but not. Familiar because they were panties, but that was all he could think. Except that time he slept with Camilla while Amanda was visiting her grandmother in Iowa.

                “Camilla,” shouted Bradley as he slapped himself in the forehead. “I wonder what she’s doing tonight.”

Saying Something

Wanting to say something,

but knowing what might be said

is likely to be misunderstood,

misinterpreted, or simply ignored

is the parasite of poetry.

A parasite so crafty in its

burrowing that there’s seemingly

nothing that can be done to

extricate it from the grooved

surface of the words.

It gets deep inside, gnawing and

chewing on confidence and

joy, on happiness and self-worth,

this parasite of doubt, this

twisting monster.

The most carefully crafted words,

strung together in elegant strands,

prayers for the right response, any response,

vulnerable to intentional silence

and dismissal.

A parasite leaving behind trails of

unamused anger as waste

and spitting up bilious clouds

of contempt, mistrust and

a general ennui for the future.

Coiled in the mind, repeating

the second guesses of insecurity,

in whispers and hushes,

casting shadows over the next

hope, the next kiss, the next love.  

Wanting to say something,

wishing for something to be said,

hoping for understanding,

acceptance and acknowledgement,

a parasite of a different kind.

Must Love Dogs

                It’s been quite a while since I wrote an essay for all my fabulous readers and I thought, “Hmm… here’s some bull crap I need to get off my chest. I know! I’ll make people read about it!”  The topic for today is the oft heard expression, mostly expressed by single women on dating websites, “Must Love Dogs”.

                I’m sick of this phrase and the implications of being villainized if I do not have an emotional affinity for dogs. Yeah, dogs are nice. They’re human beings longest evolutionary companion and we owe each other for the other’s survival for the thousands of years we roamed the planet together before setting ourselves up in walled cities. Dogs were security and protection against the harshness of the unforgiving cruelty of a long past era. So yeah, dogs are pretty cool in that respect.

                This does not mean I have to love your yapping little neurotic furball who insists on licking my face right after licking his own missing balls. Which you cruelly sliced off, Sicko.

                That’s right, I do not love dogs. I am that guy who is capable of saying that not loving dogs doesn’t make me a bad person. Judging people for not loving dogs makes you a bad person. I like dogs fine. I think they are amazing creatures and part of the amazing variations of life on Earth. They can be heroic, loyal, and sympathetic. But I mustn’t “Love” them.  I can think they are “just okay”, and still get though my morning coffee without crumbling into a pile of dog hating ash.

                I think this whole thing about being a terrible person if you didn’t love dogs started with a random comment Bill Murray might have said. “I'm suspicious of people who don't like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn't like a person.” I’m not even 100% he said that but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think dogs are a terrible judge of character. Hitler had a dog named Blondi. Hitler loved dogs. His love of dogs certainly did not excuse him of his insanity or crimes against humanity. I’m sure Hitler’s dog thought he was just the most awesome dog owner ever. Dogs do not have an inherent moral compass that makes them somehow a better judge of character.  Also, some dogs are just jerks, like people, who make judgments about people based on faulty preconceptions. So maybe the dog doesn’t like you, but maybe that dog just ate a lump of it’s own shit. So….

                The Ancient Romans loved dogs too and used them in packs to slaughter hundreds on the battlefields before they sent in the infantry to “mop up” after the gnashing horrors of their beloved war dogs. That term, war dogs, that’s where that comes from. Blood thirsty dogs ripping flesh from bone and then being praised by their Roman handlers. If I were a Celt or Barbarian, I’d have a healthy mistrust of dogs too.

                Yet, I am the bad guy for not fawning all over this mutated stumpy animal you have crapping and pissing in your yard. That’s right, human beings have transformed this animal, efficiently designed by nature, into a horror show of mutations through cross and selective breeding. I’m the bad guy though if I don’t want it sitting on the nice couch, or squeezing its head in between my lady and me while we’re trying to make out. If I tell the dog to go or lie down, my lady scowls at me like I’m the worst person ever to have existed or likely to ever exist.

                I will tolerate your dog. I’ll do that. I won’t be second fiddle to your dog though. Because, I don’t love your dog. Nature designed me to have opposable thumbs, not the dog, so I am the better mammal. The better mammal who chooses to love people, before he loves dogs.

I’m wondering if I should update my dating profile to include the phrase, “Must Love People”, and see what sort of reaction that draws? Although who am I kidding, no one reads dating profiles but me.

                So my dear readers, that’s my thought for today, let’s lay off the insistence that we “Must Love Dogs” for the sake of the dominant mammal on this planet. When human beings can love each other with the same uninhibited adoration dogs seem to have, then I’ll be okay with loving dogs. But for now, maybe let’s work on loving each other and less on pressuring others to love your dog.   

                -Author’s Note: Cruelty to animals is completely unacceptable and this essay is in no way an authorization or reason to be cruel to dogs, cats, or any of our four-legged friends. Don’t be a prick.

Putting It On

Shirt buttoned,

Belt tight.

clean pants,

putting it on tonight.

Wearing a smirk,

on top of a smile,

dimpled and cheery,

to cover the denial.

Hair brushed smooth,

parted and straight,

beard trimmed,

to attract a mate.

Planning on sophistication,

humor and wit,

in conversations and play,

with lovely women unable to commit.

Putting it on,

an outfit like armor,

in desperate hopes

for amour.

Classy cocktailing is the goal,

yet swilling down plastic cups of beer,

and stumbling through mumbled

concerns and bleary fear.

Looking nice, being nice,

polite laughing at the right parts,

yearning inside for a pure

meeting of hearts.

Being undone,

taking it off,

no pretentious exterior,

or cynical scoff.

To be undone by her smile,

to expose the raw twitching nerve,

and dismiss the phony, polite banter,

and get the one we deserve. 

Interior and Exterior soliloquy

battle for control

in this unending search

of being made whole.

The back and forth of what

to do and what to say, in defiance

of the heart, the soul, the mind,

arguing about compliance.

My shirt is buttoned,

belt is tight,

my pants are clean,

I’m not ready for tonight.