My Fingers

 

My fingers seem to thud with

ennui and malaise,

a finger lingering,

over the keyboard,

the key-bored.

 

The jaunty bouncing of

my fingers, tickity-tapping,

all over the keys, buoyant with

lively and happy words are

little sledgehammers now.

 

Sledgehammer fingers slam the keys

with an irritated gusto,

as the weight of the worries

of the World press on my

shoulders.

 

The optimistic tapping of

my fingers, with lovely and livid

verse happily flowing, seems to have

been stifled by horrors,

creeping in every crevasse.

 

Words from other fingers,

from other minds,

snapped into reality

fluent in hate and fear;

make my fingers heavy.

 

Makes my mind sad.

Makes my shoulders sag.

Makes my elbows droop,

makes my wrists ache,

makes my fingers slow.

 

Except for one finger,

proudly held so extremely high,

in the faces of hypocrisy and

hatemongering: That finger.

You know the one, that finger is just fine.

 

   

Buckets Through Time

 

I don’t have a bucket list.

I hardly have any real buckets.

But I don’t have a list of things

I think I need to do before I die.

I’ve never really worried about

a bucket list.

Or dying.

 

I have always joked that my

curse will be to live for an

excruciatingly long time;

outliving my peers, my loves,

my family by long stretches

of time.

And be really, really, really, old.

 

150 years old or older,

a forever curmudgeon,

trying to remember who

did what and when and then

realizing that no one would know

what I was talking about anyway.

“Bucket lists?”  

 

“You had lists for different buckets?”, The kids ask.

“No, no, it was a kick the bucket sort of

thing,” I’d reply in a weak old voice.

“What does kicking a bucket have to do with

being turned into Soylent Green?”

“Oh my science…,” I’d say and wave the

robot person away.

 

I have no desires to finish some

great task like climbing Mt. Everest,

or fighting a llama or smoking Cuban cigars

on the Moon with the ghost of Che Guevara,

none of those things appeal to my sensibilities.

I only hope for peace. For Quiet.

 

I hope the bucket lists of millions of other

people get fulfilled, leaving a memory of

accomplishment and a legacy of intelligent

exploration of the human condition.

Maybe a deep investigation of buckets themselves.

Buckets through time.

 

But for my own “Bucket”,

I hope I filled it while I lived,

in the present, not longing for what it could or should

be filled with. But a full and friendly reminder, tucked away in

a closet, glowing warm with happy memories,

and likely the radiation from WWIII.

 

Hopefully we can share our buckets,

and dip into them often,

never worried about what could have been,

but proudly filled with our contended souls.

Crashing the Bookmobile

 

I read things that make me mad. I read things that make me sad. I read things to explore worlds and lifestyles I’d never normally have any access to.  Passageways to unbridled imagination. 

Which I guess is…bad? 

I mean, I’m trying to understand the other side of the argument here. The part where books illustrating or representing differences in ideology, love, romance, war, sex, goose poop, what have you, or different points of view are somehow bad for us and should be banned.   

I mean, I’m not a fan of Mein Kampf but I still believe you can read it if you like and make your own decisions about what it means to you.  I’m not asking any library to take it off the shelves because the ideas represented in it are quite reprehensible. It is, after all, just the ravings of an incarcerated lunatic so upset he didn’t get his way he has to blame an entire ethnic group for all his, and therefore the worlds, problems. But I’m not asking for it to be removed. I’m not afraid of it. I might be a little afraid of the people who read it and think, “Yeah, this really speaks to me”. That is the terrifying part, but I still don’t want the book removed. 

I don’t agree with or accept a lot of what is written in the Bible. There’s a lot of killing and murder and sex and all kinds of really crazy things going in in that book. Yet, I don’t want it pulled from Libraries or bookstores. I am not afraid of it. It is a book, written centuries ago by a mostly patriarchal bros club of religious whack-a-doos. I am afraid of the people who take it literally though. They scare me more than most groups. To have the gall to say you understand the words of an omnipotent super-sky being and how those words should be interpreted; that’s something to fear. And yet, I still do not write and cry and complain to have the Bible taken off the shelves. I’m even respectful enough to still capitalize the “B” in the word, “Bible”. (Thanks Catholic school.) 

So I don’t get it. I don’t understand where all this fear of ideas is coming from. I genuinely don’t get where this vitriolic hate for the written word is spawning from. An idea is just an abstract construct. It takes many minds and hands and shoulders of the willing to bring any idea to a fruitful reality.  When did resistance to new ideas ever help to move a society forward? When did sticking our heads in the sand ever make us cool, hip, or even mildly palatable at social gatherings? 

“Hey great wine, where is it from,” asked Gary. 

“Oh!  I read this wonderful book about the vineyard, it tells you all about how the wine was made, the colorful history of the region, the atmospheric condi…, Hello? Gary? Um, why did you just ram your head into my floor?” 

“Books are scary,” was Gary’s muffled response. 

Is that really how some people want us to behave? Are we just an eyelash away from a Fahrenheit 451 future? (If you don’t get that reference, then you have to read more.) 

I cannot wrap my head around a desire to limit our human capacity for empathy, understanding, compassion, love or even the exploration of our own humanity. To try and limit that search is like hobbling an explorer or blinding any sailor who looked over the oceanic horizon and wondered what was on the other side.  I cannot fathom a civilization in which the exploration of our humanness is abandoned for the sake of “Morality” or “to safeguard the children”.  You might as well crash the bookmobile into the side of a mountain, set it on fire and run away screaming, “it was the elves, it was the Elves!” 

A society that bans the availability of books to anyone who wants them is in league with the worst autocrats, despots, dictators in history. A book banner will always be on the wrong side of history. It’s been proven over and over again. And I know that, because I’m not afraid of certain uncomfortable truths I read about, in a history book, in school, when I was nine.   

I just don’t understand where it comes from. It makes me sad. It makes me mad, every time I read about it. And still, I don’t demand it be removed from my field of view. I only ask more questions.

 Questioning is what we’re supposed to do and it’s…good.

 

 

 

 

In The Dirt

 

It grows there,

in the yard,

tendrilled roots,

twisting through

the soft Spring

dirt.

 

The weeds,

the grass,

the trees,

the bees,

the worms,

in the dirt.

 

Sunlight dappled,

burgeoning turf,

seeking out the

best sunbeams

to rise up towards,

to live in the dirt.

 

The twisted and

gnarled knots of

weedy invaders,

slowed in Winter,

defrosted in the veld grasses,

to conquer the dirt.

 

The battleground,

siege will be the order,

relentless tides of invading

greenery, hell-bent on life,

defeat simply not an option,

for those in the dirt.

 

Those that grow there,

those that go there,

are in the thick of it now;

a slow battle of nature,

unfolding relentlessly,

in the dirt.